LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap.....::.' Copyright No 

ShelfJD-6.^a 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



BOOKS BY CHARLES F. DOLE. 



The Theology of Civilization. 

l6mo, cloth, gilt top, $1. 
The author believes that there can be no lasting 
and vigorous civilization which is not inspired by 
a noble and persuasive religion, and that such a 
religion must rest on the bed rock of thoroughly 
fearless, rational, and consistent thinking. 

Luxury and Sacrifice. 

l2mo, ornamental white covers, 35 cents. 
•' It is the clearest and best statement of the office 
of w^ealth and the duties of stewardship I have ever 
seen in print. I wish it could be circulated among 
the millionaires and read by the masses as well. I 
believe it would do a much-needed missionary 
work.'* — A Reader. 

The Coming People, 

l6nno, cloth, gilt top, $1. 

*• Mr. Dole shows that the world is growing bet- 
ter, and, what is far more, will go on growing 
better in the years and ages to come." — Boston 
Transcript. 

" A sane and noble book, strong with serious and 
honest thinking." — Christian Register. 

The Golden Rule in Business. 

l2mo, ornannental white covers, 35 cents. 
Bishop Vincent declares it to be " admirable and 
worthy of the widest circulation." 

T. Y. CROWELL h. COMPANY, 

NEW YORK AND BOSTON, 



THE 



Theology of Civilization 



BY 



CHARLES F. DOLE 

Author of 
** The Coming People '* 



NEW YORK : 46 East 14TH Street 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 

BOSTON: 100 Purchase Street 



■■wwwwww n uiu i jii mwu 







^ofCon-?^-^'' 






45110 

Copyright, 1899, 
By Thomas Y. Crowell & Company. 



TWO COPIES HECEIVED, 



00 1 ei iof<y I 






This little book is dedicated to though^ 
ful men and women everywhere, the leaders 
of public opinion, upon whose earnestness, 
integrity, and faithfulness the civilization 
of the coming century must depend. 



> r 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER. PAGE. 

lNTRODucTio]sr ...... v-xxiv 

I. The Eealm of Doubt .... 1 

II. The Moral Structure op the 

Universe 21 

III. The World of Opposites . . 40 

IV. Thorough-Going Theism . . 51 
V. The Good God 67 

VI. Great Questions 90 

VII. Rational Optimism 121 

VIII. The Beginnings of Person- 
ality 143 

IX. What Personality Is . . . 161 

X. The Cost of Personality . . 179 
XI. The Eeligion of the Child 
AND the Eeligion of the 

Man 201 

XII. The Process of Civilization . 231 



INTRODUCTION. 



Ik 1897 I published a little book, " The 
Coming People," which received a very 
kindly and appreciative welcome from many 
readers. I tried to interpret the movements 
of modern life, in the only way in which 
they seem capable of an intelligible under- 
standing, into the terms of a divine universe. 
As one who had begun his thinking as 
a sceptic and without a hopeful tempera- 
ment, I boldly avowed my most serious and 
persistent conviction that the world is good 
and not bad, that life is abundantly worth 
living, that man is marching the way of a 
great and beautiful destiny. 

The conviction of optimism, in the face 
of all the facts that seem to many minds 



VI INTBODUCTION, 

difficult to adjust, grows out of a foundation 
and structure of thought. This thought, as 
it has come to me, has seemed so interesting, 
so persuasive, so inspiring and helpful that 
I now venture to publish it, in the hope that 
what has helped one man may be of equal 
interest and service to others. 
/ Perhaps there was never a time since 
man began to think when the problems of 
life for the individual, for society, for the 
State, for the future of humanity, seemed 
more tremendous than they appear at the 
close of the nineteenth century, as we take a 
long look ahead into the new times. There 
is seething unrest; there is doubt of the sanc- 
tions of religion ; there is a sense of coming 
change ; there is suspicion that premises and 
foundations, once unquestioned, are now 
perhaps undermined ; there is challenging of 
existing institutions — social, economical, 
ecclesiastical. Are the present institutions 
such as the world will continue to find use 
for? There is dread mingled with hope. 
What possible revolutions may not impend, 



INTEOB UCTIOJSr. VU 

setting the old order aside ? The current 
forms of religion count millions of votaries. 
How firm a grip have they upon men's hearts 
and consciences ? Do they succeed in giv- 
ing weary men rest, comfort, and inspiration ? 
How far do they content and satisfy thought- 
ful minds ? How strong a leverage do they 
offer for ethical and social uplifting? Is 
religion losing its hold upon the modern 
world ? Is that most noble of all forms of 
religion, Christianity, proving inadequate 
to new needs, intellectual and humanita- 
rian? Or, rather, is man about to take a 
new grip upon the substance of religion? 
Is he dissatisfied with the husks, because a 
new appetite for reality is now possessing 
him ? 

These are great questions. Many are 
asking them. Who is so shallow as not to 
care how they are answered ? Who imagines 
that it makes no difference in the actual 
lives of men, in their conduct, in their sense 
of values, in their peace of mind, in their 
happiness, courage, and cheerfulness, in the 



Vm INTRODUCTION. 

subsoil of their lives, in their friendships and 
their patriotism, how these questions are 
answered, whether in positive or negative 
terms ? Who can dream that the man out 
of whose life the sense of a living God or 
the hope of immortality has passed away 
can be the same as the man who, surveying 
all life with fearless eyes, rests his soul on a 
mighty and satisfactory conviction that 

'* God 's in his heaven 
And all 's well with his world " ? 

This book is sent out in the faith that 
many readers will be sure to care for the 
momentous subjects which our age is set to 
confront and solve. There can be no sound 
political, social, or economical structure that 
does not rest on a religious foundation. 
Upon a score of puzzling problems — about 
the suffrage, about rights and liberties, about 
the treatment of the men of black skins and 
brown skins, about colonies and depend- 
encies, about the place and functions of 
labor unions, about education, about prisons 



INTB OB UCTION. IX 

and crime, about temperance and the future 
of the home — we shall not only be likely to 
build after more enduring plans for having 
a foothold upon the far-reaching lines of a 
religious foundation, but, what is even more 
important, we shall be sure to come to every 
one of these practical problems with a cer- 
tain temper and attitude that we could not 
bring to them without a religion. These 
questions are to be solved in an atmosphere 
of courage, hope, confidence, and a large 
humanity. The shadows around them are 
dissipated in the light that shines out of a 
genuine faith in God. The shadows darken 
in a world where no religion is. 

My earliest thinking about religion started 
with a conviction that seems to me like an 
axiom. It is, that just so far as religion has 
any value, it cannot fear the most searching 
and candid inquiry. How can any reality 
be hurt by men's questions ? Do we fear the 
test of the assayer's retort for our gold ore? 
Do we shrink from the art critic's examina- 
tion of a genuine masterpiece? Do we 



X INTRODUCTION. 

need a lawyer's special plea to justify our 
love for our mothers? 

Surely no man understands any subject of 
human interest and importance unless he 
knows all its sides and aspects. He cannot 
be a good engineer without knowing the 
possibilities of mischief and destruction that 
lie in his engine and in the force of steam. 
He cannot be a good pilot and know nothing 
of the reefs at the entrance to the harbor. 
As the old proverb says, ''Everything has 
two handles." How can I be sure that I 
hold the thing by the right handle till I 
have taken pains to see what the other 
handle will do ? How can a man be perma- 
nently happy as long as there remains a sup- 
posed skeleton in any dark closet of the 
house of his thought ? What is right ? What 
is true ? What view takes in all the facts ? 
These are the questions of the lover of 
truth. Human action need not be any less 
earnest, humane, and efficient after once we 
have shaped our course by asking these 
questions. 



INTRODUCTION. XI 

Religion is like every other subject of 
human thought. What is there against 
which a plausible case may not be made 
out? What course of practical conduct is 
there against which objections may not be 
urged? There is a very wretched ''handle " 
by which the mind may take up the problem 
of the world. I hold that we do not know 
the world till we have taken it by this handle. 
I take the religious handle, because having 
tried the other, I find it impossible to hold. 

The fact is, men are far more religious than 
they know. If religion were fear or supersti- 
tion, we should have to own that the world 
is outgrowing it. But in that deeper sense 
of the word "religion," in which it means 
a universal relation, binding men together 
and urging them towards unknown ranges of 
higher development, in which it stands for 
the perennial sanctions of morality, in which 
it distinguishes right from wrong and never 
lets man off from truth and duty — in this 
sense there is a native religion in every sane 
an(J intelligent nian. It is my wish in this 



Xll INTRODUCTION. 

little book to show how the higher thought 
of religion is emerging to-day from the child- 
ish vagaries and superstitions of ignorant 
times. The religion of the great individual 
thinkers has passed upward through a process 
of development. The mind of the race is 
beginning now to pass up through the same 
process of growth. The growth surely is not 
from a childish religion to no religion at all. 
Normal growth should proceed from the re- 
ligion of children to the religion of grown- 
up men. I believe that any unprejudiced 
person who cares to look at all the considera- 
tions can come to no other conclusion. 

I have written for busy men and women 
in a busy world. I have therefore en- 
deavored to put the greatest thoughts, the 
ripe fruitage of the thinking and living of 
many generations, into the compass of a 
little book. I do not dare to call this my 
own thinking. I have listened to the voices 
of a noble company of thinkers and teachers. 
What is any modern man but the inheritor 
of the treasured wisdom of ages ? And yet 



INTB OB UCTION. XIU 

the more transparently clear this wisdom is, 
the more easy it becomes to express its 
essence in a single volume. 

Truth, indeed, is always the simplest ex- 
pression of a fact or a relation ; the most 
natural approach to truth must be the most 
straightforward — it is only the cause of 
error which needs circumlocution and inge- 
nuity of defence ; whatever is true, being, 
as it were, in the grain of nature, bears with 
it all manner of familiar and typical illus- 
trations. Error is out of line with other 
things. Truth is rich in its likenesses; it 
ought, therefore, to be easy to set forth ; 
it belongs to the structure of order and 
beauty. Why should not, therefore, the 
grandest of all subjects be made attractive 
and interesting ? What have we to do ex- 
cept to describe in the simplest terms those 
things whose great proportions have already 
filled our minds with admiration ? What if 
we might get more credit in certain quarters 
by the methods of a profound obscurity? 
Our business is not to get credit or praise ; 



XIV INTRODUCTION. 

it is merely to tell as many as possible what 
we see to be true. Are not life itself, and 
its grand elements, duty, conscience, love, as 
simple as they are profound? 

I am aware that it is venturesome to use 
the word '' theology " in my title. Men may 
be interested in religion, but can they be in- 
terested in theology ? I shall try to recall 
the word to its proper meaning. There is 
a basis of sound thought in religion. This 
basis of thought is theology. There is no 
reason, because the name has been abused, 
why we should deny the reality. If it has 
been imagined that theology is for the few, 
while religion is for the many, I shall try to 
show that in the true sense a good theology 
is a necessity to all sane minds. Theology 
is simply that aspect of religion which ap- 
peals to the reason of man, and in fact, by 
means of this appeal commands his lasting 
reverence. 

It will no doubt be felt that I have given 
only an outline of the great matters of theol- 
ogy. It has been my deliberate purpose not 



INTRODUCTION. XV 

to discuss side issues or needless matters of 
controversy. Let us once agree as to the 
true point of view ; let us settle what the 
main facts are, and I hold that we shall have 
lifted our whole subject above the range of 
controversy. I am aware, however, that in 
my treatment of the questions of sin, blame, 
responsibility, forgiveness, and freedom, I 
have taken ground which, however reason- 
able and consistent it may be, will appear to 
many to be very bold and far-reaching in its 
consequences. To some it may seem to be 
new and strange ground. I do not care 
whether my readers call the position new or 
old. I ask their candid and patient exam- 
ination, regardless of prejudice, whether the 
position is not truly and distinctly whole- 
some, as truth always must be. 

I have sought merely to suggest the bear- 
ing of the wider and more rational view of 
the nature of " moral evil " upon the treat- 
ment and the teaching of ethics. I believe, 
however, that it would be a most helpful and 
profitable task to show how in the religious 



XVI INTRODUCTION. 

philosophy of this essay the great ethical 
questions about the action of conscience, 
about duty and responsibility, about the 
various virtues and the problems of casuistry, 
about the laws of right and happiness, about 
the use and application of motives in moral 
education, all find a noble and inspiring 
solution. 

My treatment of the so-called " freedom 
of the will " may be misunderstood by those 
who come to it with the traditional preju- 
dices upon this subject that most men in- 
herit. I believe that the facts, when carefully 
observed, are as easily demonstrated as was 
the law of the planetarj^ motion when once 
Copernicus had enunciated it. As a plaus- 
ible misinterpretation of the testimony of 
men's consciousness made them unwilling to 
accept Copernicus' doctrine that the earth 
moved, so I believe that a not dissimilar 
misinterpretation of the inward consciousness 
at present largely confuses men's thought 
about the actual working of the human will. 

The enunciation of the true nature of 



INTRODUCTION. XVll 

human "freedom," simple and rational as 
it is by itself, and in accord with our best 
knowledge, may seem at first to some 
minds to be a denial of human personality. 
I have, therefore, endeavored in three con- 
secutive chapters to set forth a true doc- 
trine of human nature, and to show wherein 
real personality consists, how in the case of 
man it grows and develops, how majestic 
and practical a fact it is, and how entirely 
consistent it is with the most satisfying form 
of theism. I have tried to show that the line 
of man's higher growth as a mature and civil- 
ized man is through a necessary transition 
period of self-consciousness, egotism, and 
selfishness, — a period in which unrest and 
unhappiness menace the individual and so- 
ciety, in which man suffers conflict without 
and within, and rarely enjoys real unity, 
peace of mind, or gladness. True growth 
rises, through this period of comparative 
discomfort, upwards to a true personality, 
like God's, where man's nature at last rests 
in the stable and gladsome equilibrium of 



xvm INTEODUCTION. 

good- will. I wish to show that there is no 
real education, whether in the university 
or in the church, that does not result in this 
higher personality without the winning of 
which man's life would be a failure, and the 
magnificent processes of the universe would 
come to nought. We shall see that the true 
doctrine of personality is the secret of what 
men in every age have known as salvation, 
happiness, heaven, or eternal life. 

The concluding chapters apply the thought 
of the book by way of easy illustration to 
certain practical problems of education and 
conduct. The final test of all thought is, 
Will it work ? It must not only fit together, 
but it must fit life also. It must be capable 
of translation into hardy and chivalrous con- 
duct, and it must therefore be practicable in 
the education of children and in the pro- 
cesses of civilization. 

I believe that the time for religious con- 
troversy has passed. We have reached a 
point, through the labor of many thinkers, 
where we can now see the harmony of 



INTRODUCTION. Xix 

views that once seemed to be contradictory, 
and can therefore offer a broad and fresh 
interpretation, both ethical and uplifting, 
and more satisfactory to the conscience and 
to the intellect than any previous interpre- 
tation. Brought up in the traditions of 
the religion of early New England, familiar 
with the tremendous thoughts and searching 
experiences of a rigid "orthodoxy," going 
out to live in the larger world where all 
religions and philosophies compete, the 
Christianity of my childhood has seemed 
to take on a grand, beautiful, and universal 
form, in which no element of sound thought, 
genuine feeling, or ennobling memory is left 
out. It is no longer exclusive of aught that 
has helped men in other forms of faith. It 
puts up no barriers against the devout Jew, 
the honest Parsee, the friendly Buddhist or 
Confucian. If this is a growing world, it 
is not too much to expect that no form of 
Christianity since Jesus taught, and no form 
of theism since men began to think, could 
be so practical and workable as the new form 



XX INTBOBUCTION. 

which comes to us at the dawn of a new 
century — the inheritance of all the ages. 

It may seem strange to some that I have 
hardly attempted to make definitions. I 
have a deliberate reason for this apparent 
neglect. Little things, matters of detail 
which have a single aspect, may be defined. 
The great things, which have many sides and 
all dimensions, cannot be easily comprised 
within a definition. Who can define life or 
consciousness ? But we do not any the less 
know these facts. Mysterious as they are, 
they are necessary subjects of thought. So 
with religion ; so with our idea of God. 
We care little for names ; we are concerned 
with the reality — 

** The Somewhat which we name but cannot know, 

Ev'n as we name a star and only see 
His quenchless flashings forth, which ever show 

And ever hide him, and which are not he." 

The largeness of the thought, the infinite 
variety of the aspects, does not bar us from 
the most fruitful discussion of those aspects 
which we know. I have hoped to make my 



INTRODUCTION. XXI 

meaning plain, never by restricting myself 
to a single definition, but by suggesting 
through how many forms, parables, illustra- 
tions, and partial statements the greatest of 
subjects must be developed. If I wish to 
show what love is, I must tell stories of how 
love acts; I must recite the poems that 
praise love. In some such varied way we 
must show what we mean when we name 
God, or teach religion. I have begun with 
using these words even vaguely, just as the 
ideas come to average men. I have not 
been able to tell at first in what precise 
sense religion is a reality, and in what sense 
the word may cover a mere superstition. I 
have not tried to tell at first what I mean 
by speaking of God as a person. I can 
show this better when we come to see what 
we mean by calling each other persons. 
Meantime I must run the risk of some slight 
misunderstanding. 

I cannot too strongly urge and emphasize 
the characteristic test of truth in modern 
thought and reasoning. How do we know 



xxii INTBOBUCTION. 

a truth, when we see it? We know it 
because it matches, fits, goes into the unity, 
" makes sense." To match and fit is to be 
true. But a lie fits nowhere ; it separates, 
whereas truth binds. It is like tlie old 
story of Cain. There is no place where a 
lie can stay. The universe simply will not 
receive it. So with all the wrong things. 
They have no dwelling-place. But the 
things right and true are fixed in the eter- 
nal structure of the world. Their patterns 
endure. 

The sum of truth is not a chain which 
is only as strong as its weakest link. The 
sum of truth is a universe in which all 
things harmonize and each has its place. 
Do you stand where things tend, as you 
view them, to make a harmony? This is 
the test of any man's position as a thinker. 
Does his view of truth, incorporated into 
conduct, make toward fullness of life ? This 
is a sort of demonstration that his thinking 
is right. What is the kind of thought out 
of which a noble civilization may be con- 



INTBODUCTION, XXIU 

structed? This is what the world longs to 
know. 

I have not cared to enter into the old 
question whether we may see moral or 
religious truths by " intuition." It is 
certain that all the material for our think- 
ing comes to us first through the doors of 
our senses. It is equally certain that we 
possess an imaginative or constructive fac- 
ulty whereby we continually translate the 
raw material of thought into new and higher 
terms. All science proceeds by the use of 
this imaginative faculty. Newton watching 
the falling apple, Agassiz measuring the 
movement of glaciers, Tyndall studying the 
passage of sound through a fog bank, 
speedily passed the material that their senses 
gave them through the alembic of the scien- 
tific imagination, and lo ! truths and princi- 
ples and a certain order of the world dis- 
closed themselves. We use precisely the 
same faculty of scientific or constructive im- 
agination in regard to morals and religion. 
We have the same reason for trusting it in 



XXIV INTRODUCTION. 

the one place as in the other. It is the same 
faculty by which the musician makes a har- 
mony or detects discords, which, applied to 
moral conduct, pronounces one action wrong, 
that is, dissonant, or out of line, and another 
action right, fitting, or beautiful. 

The plan of the book admits some repeti- 
tion of the more important thoughts. Such 
thoughts are like the theme of a symphony : 
their recurrence ought to serve and not to 
frustrate the unity of the book. 



I wish to express my hearty acknowledgments of 
the kindness of my friend Prof. Edward Hale, of 
Harvard University, who has read the proofs of the 
book as it has gone through the press. 



THE THEOLOGY OF 
CIVILIZATION. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE KEALM OF DOUBT. 

Every one knows — even children early 
find out — that there are men and women 
who profess not to believe in religion. Per- 
haps these doubters of religion maintain a 
very respectable character. They have the 
courage of their convictions, and openly 
avow themselves to be atheists, materialists, 
pessimists, or agnostics. They are not always 
to be taken too seriously : they sometimes 
doubt or deny the validity of religion for 
the sake of making an argument; they may 
even enjoy drawing attention to themselves 
as peculiar, original, brilliant, and indepen- 
dent people. 



'A THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

Few as the doubters and deniers of relig- 
ion may be, there are moods of mind and 
feeling with many of us, when we wonder 
whether they are not right. There is often 
a dim and uncomfortable suspicion that if 
the truth all came out, there would not be 
any religion. It is vaguely guessed that 
there are very damaging facts to be urged 
against the fundamental propositions of re- 
ligion, against the very existence of God ; or, 
if he exists, against his goodness, or against 
the possibility of our knowing anything 
about him, or having any kind of commun- 
ion with him. It is surmised that science 
in her new discoveries about the origin of 
man and the relation of the body to the 
mind has brought forward dangerous objec- 
tions against the immortality of the soul, or 
indeed against the existence of the soul. 

I propose to take an excursion into the 
realm of doubt. Is it not idle business to 
stand upon the ground of religion, like men 
under arms to guard their native land ? If 
the religious view of the universe is true, all 



THE REALM OF DOUBT. 3 

truth belongs to it. The reahii of doubt is 
no foreign or dangerous country, a devil's 
land that we must beware of ; it is a part of 
the universe. Let us go over and see it; 
let us traverse it as far as any man can ; let 
us not be in the least afraid of finding wild 
beasts or other enemies in it. If there are 
deep forests, let us explore them and open 
them to the light. Is there any fact in 
this dark continent that threatens to hurt 
us ? Let us march up to such a fact and in- 
terrogate it, and hear what it has to say for 
itself. Is it possible that an}^ one believes 
in religion, and yet is afraid of a truth? 

It is a fact, at the outset, that everything 
in this world, so far as the human mind is 
concerned, is capable of a negative as well 
as a positive interpretation. Is the sunshine 
a blessing ? But it may kill as well as bless. 
Is the rain from heaven useful to man? 
But it may inundate his fields and sweep 
his buildings away. Is the ocean a mighty 
highway for the nations ? But it also sinks 
our ships in its waves. Success, money. 



4 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

praise, honors — all these things may spoil 
man's character and bring him care and 
pain rather than happiness. I know of 
nothing that cannot be translated into terms 
of negation, of harm, loss, pain, unhappi- 
ness. It depends at every turn upon how I 
use my circumstances and belongings, and 
what my attitude is toward them, whether I 
shall call them good or bad. Moreover, I 
need to know what the chances of mishap 
are, in order that I may know how to pre- 
vent them, or even to turn them into ad- 
vantages. 

It is not strange that the universe itself, 
or the sum of all things, is likewise capable 
of a purely negative interpretation. This 
is the nature of our minds. As there are 
solutions in the higher mathematics in 
which you have your choice whether you 
will write plus or minus before the answer, 
so it is Avith the universe. You can write 
the minus sign before your answer to the 
question whether you believe in it, whether 
you are glad of it, whether in short it is 



THE REALM OF DOUBT. 5 

good. To me, I confess, the universe means 
more, and not less, in tliat it is capable of an 
infinite solution on either side of the line. 
Am I afraid of this negative solution? On 
the contrary, I never yet followed it out, 
and tried carefully to see what it means, 
without coming back with a new sense 
of supreme satisfaction to the positive solu- 
tion, to which I hold that the other is re- 
lated, as the shadow is related to the light. 
I am glad of the shadow, infinite as it is. I 
understand the light the better for seeing it. 
From the side of the shadow I simply can- 
not explain the fact of the light. From the 
side of the light I can see why shadows 
must be. 

Let us suppose, for a while, that the 
atheist is right, and let us plunge boldly into 
the gloom of a world of negations. Perhaps 
it will prove rather pleasant at first. It 
begins with cool half-lights. There is a 
sense of having escaped from constraints 
and conventions ; there is some exhilaration 
at being in new paths, which timid people 



6 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

have marked as " dangerous." We are free of 
wearisome customs — for instance, of going 
to church every Sunday ; we say good-by to 
the superstitions, ecclesiasticisms, and child- 
ish ceremonies that mark the border land be- 
tween faith and doubt. Where are we now ? 
We are supposing that it is of no use to 
pray or to worship God. We are supposing 
that there is no God. We are trying for a 
while the experiment of living without any 
religion. We are assuming that there is no 
good power in the universe, except such 
powers of goodness as men develop for them- 
selves. We suppose that matter and force 
are the only realities that abide. We men 
are what force, playing on matter, makes us. 
When the matter changes its shape, when 
the vital force (whatever that is) goes out 
of us, there is the end of the man. Why 
not? 

Possibly we are quite content with this 
view of the world. We have carried with us 
for our journey a little supply of provisions 
that were raised on the other side of the 



THE REALM OF DOUBT, 7 

line. Have we not our character left? we 
say. Have we not our honesty, our courage, 
our passion for truth, our kindness, and gen- 
erosity, our splendid human love and friend- 
ship? If we have got rid of any selfish 
desire for another life, do we not look for- 
ward with high hopes of human progress, 
to which our noble efforts shall be devoted? 
Let us go back now and report to our friends 
what a fine country this is which we have 
explored. 

Not so fast. We have only taken a mere 
holiday excursion into the negative realm. 
For hundreds of years men have been accus- 
tomed to travel far enough to say in their 
hearts, '•'- There is no God," and to ask, '' If 
a man die, shall he live again ? " Ages ago 
men knew that a blow on the head stopped 
the life, just as well as they know in these 
days of microscopes. Who has never con- 
templated superficial facts that make for the 
negative interpretation of life ? A man has 
not necessarily thought very far on the neg- 
ative side in denying '' God " and " immor- 



8 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

tality." He may have only denied certain 
misunderstandings of his own about what 
these words mean. He may not be an infi- 
del at all in declining to say '' God." He 
must think far enough in his denials to show 
us what he means by denying the reality 
of God. Does he really deny that there is 
any goodness in the universe? Is there 
no moral structure whatever ? Is there no 
power of any sort that makes for righteous- 
ness ? These are the denials that we are 
bound to make in pushing our way into the 
very heart of the realm of doubt. In other 
words, the negative interpretation of the 
universe is tremendously radical. See what 
you take if you take it at all ! 

I said that we began with a stock of cer- 
tain comfortable provisions — virtues, con- 
victions, aspirations, ideals of progress. 
These things do not grow any longer in the 
land of shadows. The climate does not suit 
them ; or if they still appear in favored spots, 
they are like the stunted trees that barely 
live in the Arctic regions. They survive, 



THE BEALM OF DOUBT, 9 

but you will never get fruit from them. 
Nevertheless, let us see if we cannot march 
on without them. 

We have now got fairly out of the light. 
We started cheerfully with saying that there 
is no God — our name for eternal goodness. 
We are frankly saying now : '' There is no 
goodness at all; there are no standards of 
any sort visible, of beauty, of harmony, of 
justice, of truth. There is no duty except 
each creature's convenience. There is no 
love except in the terms of the animal 
world." Tell us why we should be wor- 
shipping truth? What is truth, where all 
things rise and fall, and live and die, as the 
waves go and come on the beach? Why, 
in this realm of shadows, must any one take 
the trouble to seek truth. There is no 
answer to this question, unless it is a mock- 
ing laugh, or an echo. Truth is of the realm 
of the light, not of the darkness. Truth 
has no place when you once translate the 
world into its negative quantities. 

We have not merely got out of the region 



10 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

of religion. We have also got where no in- 
stitutions, laws, liberties, moralities thrive. 
These growths follow ideals, faiths, hopes, 
and without such positive and spiritual 
leading droop and decay. Life, if healthy, 
tends always to be positive and assertive ; if 
it ever denies, it must deny for a wider af- 
firmation. But let life once go over alto- 
gether to the side of denial, and it fails at its 
sources. At the last analysis radical denial 
is death. Translate the universe, then, into 
universal terms of denial, and all thinking 
must stop. What is the use in thinking? 
What is the sense or coherence in it? Why 
then should we, who have now no convictions 
that justice is real, struggle and make sacri- 
fices in order to embody justice in laws, con- 
stitutions, and bills of rights ? And how 
can we have valid convictions of justice and 
right, to be wrought into our institutions, 
who hold that we ourselves are only the re- 
sultants of the play of atoms and forces ? 

What were we saying a little Avhile ago 
about human progress? We have got 



THE REALM OF DOUBT, 11 

safely beyond all the talk of progress. 
Progress ? Perhaps, for a few centuries, as 
the wave rises a little higher before it falls 
back. What is progress, where righteous- 
ness, truth, love, duty are only the colors 
that the insects and birds take on to attract 
their mates, or to protect themselves from 
their enemies? What is progress, where 
the Christs simply die under torture, and 
where it is a question of a little time before 
all men will have perished likewise ? What 
is a merely material progress, in view of the 
burnt suns swinging in empty and meaning- 
less space ? 

The Saurian creature indeed made prog- 
ress, if we suppose that he prepared for 
the coming of a higher order of creatures. 
The savage made progress, if we suppose that 
he led the way for the more civilized man. 
But what progress lies before the civilized 
man, when faith, hope, love have gone the 
way of his idols, and the ghastly old age of 
the race stares him in the face ? 

There are noble men who are calling for 



12 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

various economical and political reforms. 
These reforms are in the line of human 
progress, they tell us. They ask my co- 
operation. What shall I do — help them 
or not? To help them means effort, ex- 
pense, it may be sacrifice, and unpopu- 
larity. Suppose that there is no human 
progress ; why should I help a doubtful or 
troublesome cause — for workingmen whom 
I do not know, for people over the seas, for 
unborn generations ? I must believe in 
something if I take the path of reform ; I 
must think that progress is real and worth 
while ; I must come out of the world of 
shadows and the minus sign, and have some 
sort of religion ; I have no courage or will 
to reform a meaningless world. 

We started with certain fine watchwords 
for our journey to hearten us on our way. 
" Let us be honest," '' let us be brave," '' let 
us have sense," we said to ourselves as we 
marched. These watchwords have died out 
of our ears as we have come to the end of 
the route. There is just one report to bring 



THE REALM OF DOUBT. 13 

back, when we have seen all and traversed 
every path that man can follow. Our re- 
port is that there is no sense, and no truth, 
and nothing worth spending human courage 
upon, in a universe interpreted into negative 
or atheistic terms. It makes no sense. It 
is not worth living in. Its logical conclusion 
is suicide. You could not live in such a 
world if you tried. The eternal logic of 
life forbids anything more than an excur- 
sion into such a wilderness, or at best a sum- 
mer vacation spent on its confines. 

I said that we could write the minus sign 
before every event of our lives and turn the 
best things into mischief. Do we therefore 
do this ? On the contrary, we should make 
fools of ourselves by this sort of interpreta- 
tion. We make it the business of life, the 
object of our science, the effort of our energy, 
the purpose of our thought, to turn all the 
material of life into forms of good. We 
learn to control the forces of nature and to 
compel them to serve us. We find out the 
uses of poisons and refuse. We learn like- 



14 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

wise '' the moral uses of dark things." We 
confront disappointment and pain, and wrest 
a blessing from them. We not only call this 
practical wisdom ; but we say that this course 
is true, that is, it is logical, and " makes 
sense." It tests our courage also. It re- 
quires honesty. This course ''works," fits, 
matches, constitutes life. We therefore 
believe in it. What is truth, except that 
which makes sense? 

Why should we not apply to the problem 
of the whole the same rule which we apply 
to the treatment of every part ? Here is the 
vast negative interpretation of the universe 
which we have contemplated. It is hideous, 
chaotic, impracticable, senseless, suicidal. 
Shall we believe it? Shall we adopt it? 
Not unless we are fools. Not if there is any 
other possible interpretation of the universe 
into rational, workable, and harmonious 
terms. For my part, the negative, atheistic, 
materialistic interpretation of the world 
seems good as a foil against which to set off 
reality. Can it be, I ask, that any mind seri- 



THE BEALM OF DOUBT. 15 

ously proposes to erect the mere foil into an 
idol to worship ? I assure him that he would 
never dream of the foil, if it were not that he 
had at least caught the image of the reality. 
But let us see, granting that we cannot 
make any sense by being pessimists and 
atheists, whether we cannot play the part 
of "agnostics." The agnostic is one who 
professes that he knows nothing, or has no 
thought whatever, about the great questions 
of life and the universe. Whether there is 
a God or not, whether there is a future life 
or not, whether we " have souls " or not, 
whether life is worth living or not, he has 
no opinion. How can he know? he says. 
He can wait. This position is rather fasci- 
nating to many minds. Let us examine it 
and see to what it comes practically. We 
will suppose that the agnostic acts in line 
with his agnosticism. Let his conduct 
match his thinking, or, rather, his unwilling- 
ness to think. Is his position worthy of a 
right-minded man ? See if it is not rather 
the position of tlie shirk or the coward ? 



16 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

The consistent agnostic does not try to 
make any sense out of life, any reason and 
harmony out of thought. He stays near the 
dividing line between the world of light and 
the world of shadows. He tries to get the 
advantages of both without the burdens of 
either. If a man thinks that this is really 
God's world there are certain momentous 
responsibilities that fall upon him. He 
must live as if it were God's world. He 
cannot venture to do an injustice or tell an 
untruth. But the agnostic, supposing that 
he is consistent in his agnosticism, shirks 
these mighty responsibilities. He does not 
oblige himself to be too strenuous. We 
cannot know, he says to himself, whether 
this is a righteous world or not. But he 
does not wish other men to live as if there 
were no good God. The agnostic does not 
wish other men to give up religion ; he does 
not believe in falsehood, lust, and animalism ; 
he does not even purpose to '' look over the 
edges of things " and to see where atheism 
and materialism come out. The asfuostic 



THE BEALM OF DOUBT. 17 

likes to play with ideals, but not to follow 
them. How many agnostics did yon ever 
see who had taken earnest pains to travel all 
lengths, and both ways, in the fearless 
course of their thought? 

So much for the ordinary and fairly con- 
sistent agnostics, who will neither be relig- 
ious nor anti-religious, who live and act as 
their agnosticism requires, living in many 
cases conveniently decent lives, without 
faith, hopes, enthusiasms, — moral and intel- 
lectual drones, enjoying all the inheritance 
of the toils and struggles of generations of 
strenuous and devoted men. Obviously, in 
a world led by agnostics of such a character 
human progress would cease. 

I have spoken of one kind of agnosticism. 
It is that of the man who knows nothing of 
the great problems of life, and acts as if he 
knew nothing of them. I am aware that 
the name " agnostic " has also been given to 
certain stanchly righteous and fearless men, 
like Mr. Huxley, who loved the truth more 
than he loved life. In actual conduct and 



18 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

life Huxley interpreted the universe, not 
into negative, but into positive terms. Who 
in all England more obediently followed 
truth as the supreme reality? Who cared 
more for practical righteousness ? Who more 
revered the ancient prophetic summary of 
religion as consisting of justice, mercy, 
humility? Was any bishop in England a 
greater idealist than this votary of scientific 
accuracy and national honesty ? Huxley was 
no atheist or materialist ; it is doubtful 
whether he ought to be called an agnostic, 
for he lived and acted as one who believed 
in the moral structure of the universe. His 
life may be called an heroic struggle in the 
direction of religion, that is, of the positive 
interpretation of the problems of life. 

The trouble with Mr. Huxley and others 
of his generation was that there survived in 
their minds that ancient species of thought 
known as dualism. They tried to act as if 
this were a moral universe, as if it were 
indeed God's world, while they talked and 
felt as if it were in large measure also the 



THE REALM OF DOUBT. 19 

devil's world. For themselves they were on 
the side of the forces of righteousness, but 
they surmised that there was a mighty under- 
tow that ran the way of evil. These men 
were born too early to be able fairly to inter- 
pret the doctrine of evolution. 

I wish to make the practical question 
about agnosticism very plain. This ques- 
tion is not " What do you philosophize 
about the universe ? " but, " What will you 
do with it? " Will you live in it as if it 
were righteous, or as if it were evil? 
When a man lives in it as if it were right- 
eous, that man is a theist in act, if not in 
belief. When a man lives in it as if it 
were evil or indifferent, that man, whatever 
his creed may be, is a practical atheist. 
Does the church warden or deacon put 
false wares on the market? He thereby 
declares that he does not know that there 
is any God. Does the doubter of all the 
creeds tell the unpopular truth and turn 
his back sorrowing upon the church of his 
childhood, upon his own party, upon the pre- 



20 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

vailing politics of the nation, for his con- 
science' sake ? He thereby professes his faith 
in a divine universe. I hope to make this 
fact plain in the following chapter. 



THE MORAL STBUCTUBE, "21 



CHAPTER II. 

THE MORAL STUUGTUJRE OF THE UNIVERSE. 

We have seen that the mind cannot in- 
terpret the world into the terms of denial 
and doubt. We cannot make righteous, 
much less, strenuous, conduct match with 
the thought of pessimism, atheism, or even 
the mildest-mannered agnosticism. Actual 
problems of life are always forcing us to 
face toward a positive and structural con- 
ception of the meaning of life. 

The truth is, no one needs to offer men 
a religion. No one can manufacture a re- 
ligion. Religion is a vital force in man. 
You can only help to develop and nurture 
it. Let us see what are the elemental be- 
liefs, which are universally to be found 
among men and boys not less than among 
true-hearted women. Imagine, for the sake 



22 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

of the argument, the hardest-headed man, 
if only he has kept his soul and life pure. 
Let him suppose that religion is "only for 
women." Let him think that he only be- 
lieves in what he can see, weigh, and meas- 
ure. See notwithstanding how many pro- 
found beliefs in the things "unseen and 
eternal" this man cherishes. 

Does he begin by saying that he believes 
in matter and force? Be it so. We Avill 
hardly stop to remind him that matter in 
itself is as great a mystery as spirit. We 
know it by its changes, its activities, its 
manifestations. But who ever saw, touched, 
tasted, or handled an atom of it? It is a 
perfectly tenable theory about matter, that 
each atom is merely a whirling centre of 
force. We all believe in matter, in some 
real sense. Yes. But whoever believes in 
it, unseen as it is, has no word to offer why 
we should not believe in God. 

And what is force, in which we all so 
solidly believe? Watch the electric car 
climbing a hill by the mere touch of the 



THE MOBAL STBUCTUBE. 23 

trolley on the wire. We see what happens. 
Do we see what does the work? We feel 
the wind blow, urging our boat through the 
water. Every one knows that wind is noth- 
ing but air in motion. What starts this 
motion? Why do the atoms dance and 
whirl? The questions in the Book of Job 
are no more unanswerable than those which 
modern science asks. Who shall say that 
force, in which all believe, may not be the 
action of the will of God. Surely blind 
force has no significance. 

We believe in money; it is good and 
desirable. Desirable for what? Why is it 
good? Is it not because there are values 
higher than money, which money only sym- 
bolizes and serves ? What is money, unless 
it brings human happiness, a purely invisi- 
ble thing, but more real than gold? 

The whole world of business believes in 
credit. You cannot see credit, but there is 
no civilized trade or industry without it. 
Fire sweeps away a man's fortune in a night, 
as when Boston or Chicago was burned. 



24 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

The man without a dollar of his own is 
straightway at work again selling goods or 
rebuilding blocks of stores. What is this 
invisible power of credit that gives him the 
mastery over values and things ? It depends 
on the man's character. And what is char- 
acter, on which credit rests ? There is noth- 
ing so intangible, and nothing more real and 
substantial. The man's limbs, his form, his 
features are not so much himself as is his 
character. It is this for which you honor, 
trust, and love him. See now the elements 
that make character. They are all invisible ; 
but all men believe in them. 

First, there is honesty. Who does not 
believe in honesty? We must have mer- 
chants, cashiers, accountants, manufacturers, 
upon whom we can rely. Grant that there 
are too many men who ''have their price." 
All the more necessary is it that there shall 
be those who are beyond price. There are 
such men in every city. How honest are 
the best men whom we know? We may 
say that they are infinitely honest. A man 



THE MORAL STRUCTURE. 25 

is not really honest who could be bought for 
any number of millions of dollars. The 
invisible thing, honesty, has an infinite qual- 
ity in it. 

Next, we believe in faithfulness. We must 
not only have trustworthy treasurers in our 
savings banks, but we must have an army of 
men — engineers, switchmen, and others — 
on whom the lives of millions depend. How 
faithful must these men be ? We say that 
they must be utterly and infinitely faithful. 
The engineer must be ready to die for our 
sakes, with his hand on the throttle of his 
engine. The switchman must stand like a 
soldier at his post, however exhausted, in all 
weathers. Let train robbers ply every art of 
persuasion, the railroad man must be beyond 
temptation to betray his trust. This is the 
kind of faithfulness that we believe in, and 
actually discover. 

We believe also in courage ; in the 
courage of the soldier who scales the heights 
in the face of flashing guns, in the courage 
of the lonely picket-guard amid the unseen 



26 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

perils of the night, in the courage that 
suffers in the hospital, in the courage of 
mothers and wives who have ventured 
all they love best for the cause of their 
country. We believe no less in the courage 
of the heroes of peace, in the courage of 
William Penn founding a Commonwealth in 
the wilderness and making friends of the 
savages, in the courage of Elizabeth Fry 
facing the most hardened men in Newgate 
Prison for mercy's sake, in the courage of 
Charles Sumner standing up alone in the 
Senate Chamber against great majorities, 
careless of his future, reckless of popularity 
and reputation, for the sake of the slave. 
We believe in no hesitating, guarded, meas- 
ured courage, but in infinite courage, over- 
coming all things. What man is so much 
an infidel as not to believe in courage like 
this? 

We all believe in justice. We must have 
judges for our courts. They hold in their 
hands the lives of men, the welfare of States, 
it may be the interests of peace and war. 



THE MOBAL STBUCTtlMK 27 

How just must they be ? To ask this seriously 
is not to be just. The boys at their games 
know this. How fair must their umpire be ? 
You cannot buy him, bully him, compel him, 
tempt him, though only a boy, not to render 
an upright decision. So with the judge. 
We believe that no earthly consideration, 
not friendship, not ambition, not party, not 
even patriotism, must sway him from the 
strict highway of justice. 

We believe in truthfulness. Lies separate 
men ; truth binds them into compact society. 
You are sending an expert to report upon a 
mine in the Rocky Mountains. You call an 
expert into court to help the jury make 
up their verdict. You bid men of science 
and ministers of religion tell you the truth. 
Do you complain that the experts too fre- 
quently play you false? This only em- 
phasizes your demand for men of infinite 
truthfulness. You have no use for any 
expert who will not tell you " the truth, the 
whole truth, and nothing but the truth." 
Suppose you claim to have no religion 



28 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

whatever. Suppose the case of Mr. Robert 
G. Ingersoll himself. Would he have been 
hired for any value in money, even though 
under the secrecy of a Gyges' ring, to lie ? 
Would he have professed to be a good Pres- 
byterian for the sake of getting a lucrative 
government appointment? Would he have 
told a lie to save his life ? Yes or no ? Say 
Yes, and no English-speaking audience vfould 
have cared to hear him a second time. Say 
No, and you have admitted, and Mr. Inger- 
soll must have admitted, that he believed in 
things '' unseen and eternal." For why 
should an animal, in a world of mere matter 
and force, put all material things aside and 
risk his life for a sentiment ? It is because 
the sentiment is mightier than all visible 
things. It is because the man who confesses 
himself to be swayed and bound by his sen- 
timent for truth contains in his soul the in- 
visible structure that binds the universe 
together. 

Again, we believe in that most invisible 
and undefinable of all things, love. Explain 



THE MORAL STRUCTUBE. 29 

it away if you can ; write a minus sign before 
its value ; trace its origin as you like ; it 
begins, no doubt, in the animal realm where 
all conscious life begins to show itself. 
Nevertheless, love moves the world ; nothing 
is more solidly real. Imagine it out of our 
lives, or suppose it a dream, and all life is a 
dream, or worse. But you cannot imagine 
it out of the world. The rudest man is 
capable of going to death for his faith in 
this bed-rock of the universal religion. He 
has an ideal in his soul of a mother or a wife, 
so true, so tender, so genuine, that she would 
give all for his sake. He is never fully a 
man till he knows that he has in himself this 
same sort of love. Do you or do you not 
own to a belief in such love ? Do you believe 
in love, beyond price, question, fear, meas- 
ure, — of infinite worth ? If you do, you 
are avowing a faith that only needs a slight 
change in language to become exactly what 
was meant hundreds of years ago, when an 
unknown writer, doubtless inspired, said, 
" Now are ye the sons of God." If man has 



80 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

such love, it must be because this love is the 
most characteristic fact of the universe. 

We believe not merely in the love of 
parents, children, friends, kindred, but in a 
wonderful form of love known as disinter- 
estedness, unselfishness, patriotism, the love 
of mankind. There must be some men, if 
not all, devoted to the welfare of their fel- 
lows. The great prophets, the heroes, states- 
men, reformers, have been men of this sort. 
What if they got no reward ? What if they 
perished unthanked ? They were not serving 
for pay or ambition, or for their own ease 
and pleasure. 

We believe also in faith. I say faith 
advisedly. You wish to take a partner into 
your firm. What sort of a man do you 
choose? Do you want a man filled with 
suspicion ? He would only do j^our business 
harm. You want intelligence in your part- 
ner, but you want faith, confidence, a reason- 
able trust, — trust in human nature, trust in 
the prospects of your business, of the city, 
of the nation, trust in human progress and 



THE MORAL STBUCTURE. 81 

in the order of the universe. Did you ever 
see permanent success in any human under- 
taking that was not carried on and brought 
to a finish by men of faith ? Not even the 
doubters and the pessimists can argue, dis- 
cuss, and criticise, except by reason of an 
elemental faith that there are foundations of 
truth worthy to be examined and trusted. 

Once more, we all believe in hope. It 
cannot be seen or measured, but is it not a 
sort of vital function? A man comes into 
your street to live. Suppose that he carries 
hope wherever he goes. Suppose that he 
faces disappointments, reverses and losses, 
bereavements, and death itself, with this 
sunny hope. The man adds to the whole 
neighborhood a rare and valuable quality, 
believed in by every one. 

See now what a splendid list of invisible 
commodities we all hold precious and firmly 
believe in ! — they are honesty, faithfulness, 
courage, justice, truthfulness, generosity, 
love, disinterestedness or public spirit, faith, 
and hope. These things constitute charac- 



32 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

ter and make credit. They are not abstract 
things ; tliey do not exist in the sky, or in 
some other sphere ; they are here and there 
and everywhere. We believe in them as 
we believe in matter and force, because we 
have to deal with them and cannot live 
without them. But we did not make them 
or invent them any more than we create 
electricity or the wind. They are in us, as 
if something greater than ourselves mani- 
fested itself through them in our lives. In 
other words, they belong to nature or God, 
and are doubtless the highest and best man- 
ifestations of what the universe has to offer 
to its children. They are surely not mate- 
rial things, and we therefore call them 
••' spiritual." 

We must go farther. We not only be- 
lieve in honesty, and our grand list of spir- 
itual realities ; we do not merely believe 
that they are of a priceless and infinite 
value; we are persuaded also that we 
ought, every man of us, to realize these 
values. There is something akin to a 



THE MORAL STRUCTURE. 33 

mighty and universal gravitation upon us, 
binding and urging us to do every right- 
eous thing; yes, to be honest, faithful, 
brave, just, generous, — men of faith and 
love. In so far as we ever resist the move- 
ment of this gravitation, this life force, well- 
ing up in us with its everlasting '' ought," 
we feel a kind of pain, like a bodily ache 
betraying disease. There is satisfaction, 
like no other satisfaction, whenever our souls 
give themselves to this invisible motion. 

Who is the sceptic that doubts, or knows 
nothing of these solemn facts of life ? Who 
is it that ever ventures to use the words, 
" Let us be honest," " Let us be brave," 
" Let us be fair," '' Let us tell the truth," 
and does not know that not to be honest, 
brave, fair, and true is to seek to put our 
small and separate selves against the will of 
the universe ? 

What is the surging sense of the '' ought " 
that we call duty, which one of the greatest 
thinkers tells us always impressed him like 
the sight of the starry heavens ? Whom 



34 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

does it not thus impress, who hears its sol- 
emn and majestic imperative ? Long ago 
the Greek poet sang about 

** The unwritten laws of God that know not change ; 
They are not of to-day nor yesterday, 
But live forever, nor can man assign 
When first they sprang to being." 

Whether or not the intelligence always 
sees truly, whether or not it possesses all 
the facts upon which to make up its judg- 
ment in each case as to what is right, 
whatever changing forms right takes from 
generation to generation, as intelligence 
grows clearer, at least the pressure to obey 
the right, so far as men see it, is a fun- 
damental fact of our being. Show us 
what is right, and we all agree that we 
ought to do it. We call such a fact as this 
" universal," meaning that it is of the uni- 
verse ; it rises out of the nature of things. 

We easily say this. But to say as much 
as this is to say that we believe. that this is a 
moral world, that its structure is righteous. 



THE MORAL STRUCTURE. 35 

There is not and cannot be any universal 
" ought " in a world of mere matter and 
force. But this is a world where the 
"ought," being with us and in us, sway- 
ing us its everlasting way, cannot be set 
aside or cast out. This must therefore 
be a spiritual universe. Eeligion dwells 
with this sense of "ought," is bound up 
with it, grows out of it. 

We go farther yet in the beliefs of our 
common religion, agreed to by all men 
whose opinion deserves respect. The world 
has seen men, every nation that has a 
literature has produced men, every village 
of any civilized land has in it men and 
women, who have actually combined in 
themselves the grand qualities in which 
we believe. We will not take Jesus' case 
now ; we will leave it aside, lest some one 
might say that it was exceptionaL We 
will not insist that those whom we praise 
have been perfect and flawless. We only 
say that men and women have walked 
this earth who have been honest, faithful, 



36 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

fearless, just, sincere, large-hearted, full of 
faith and hope. Could you buy or bribe 
them? Could you frighten or compel 
them ? Never. They did the right, some 
one says, because it would bring them 
praise or a reputation. But many are those 
who have followed the right when duty was 
unpopular, in the teeth of risks, when 
society expected and desired conduct of an 
entirely different sort. Did Isaiah and 
Amos tell the truth because their contem- 
poraries thanked them for telling it? Did 
Lord Shaftsbury take up the cause of 
the children of the poor because society 
would flatter him for his services ? Did 
Wilberforce go to the rescue of the slave 
because this promised the rewards of ambi- 
tion ? Here were men who stood in advance 
of their times. The human currents set the 
opposite way to their course. They stood 
often alone, in the face not of praise, but of 
curses. Is there any doubter who does not 
believe in the splendid procession of the 
lovers of liberty and of righteousness, in 



THE MORAL STRUCTURE, 37 

certain great Hebrew names, in Confucius, 
in Buddha, in Epictetus and the Stoics, in 
William of Orange, Sir Thomas More and 
Washington, in Channing and Martineau 
and Tennyson ? As well discredit the Par- 
thenon, the Dresden Madonna, the plays of 
Shakespeare, the symphonies of Beethoven! 

It has sometimes been said that religion 
was founded in superstition and fear. Men 
worship and pray in dread of the unknown 
powers about them. Grant that this is a 
possible interpretation of a good deal of the 
religion that one sees in the world. Grant 
whatever one cares to show on this side. 
There remains a religion that has cast out 
all fear. It acts not from dread of hell or 
even from the hope of heaven. It is like a 
vital and instinctive force in those whom it 
possesses, pushing its way in the dark as in 
the light. 

Where do these men come from in whom 
we instinctively believe as soon as we see 
them ? Do they make themselves ? They 
seem to me to be the fruitage of the 



38 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

universe. " Here," says nature (or shall 
we not say God?), '""here is my handi- 
work, a specimen of what I purpose to do ; 
here is a true and veritable man — a child 
of the universe. In him know the nature 
from which he sprang, coming to light in his 
deeds and his face ! Do you like my fruit ? 
Do you believe in my children ? Believe 
then in me." How could we help believing, 
we answer, if only we could see more of this 
kind of fruit ? '' This is what I am about," 
the reply is. '' Obey my laws, yield to the 
life forces moving you, and the world shall 
be filled with similar fruitage." 

Observe now what a treasure of veritable 
religion every man carries with him. He 
may hardly recognize it; he may be far 
from living up to it ; he may think that it 
is only the people in churches who do not 
'' live up to their religion." He may boast 
that he believes merely in the things which 
he sees. But when you interrogate him, he 
proves a believer in character, in righteous- 
ness, in unseen ideals, in duty, in some 



THE MORAL STEUCTUBE. 39 

majestic Power greater than man, greater 
than the biggest majorities, greater than all 
the men in all ages, that urges him to duty. 
He believes also in the men who live up to 
their ideals, and do right in " scorn of con- 
sequence." Whatever wrong he may do 
himself, he does not believe in men who live 
like beasts, but in men who actually live as 
the sons of God. Am I not right in calling 
this grand series of beliefs a religion and in 
asserting that men are religious by nature ? 
Am I not right in claiming that among all 
thoughtful men there is a belief, growing 
strong with years and experience, in the 
facts of a moral structure in the universe ? 
Bear in mind also that the word " moral,'' 
if not the word " universe " itself, is not a 
material term, but describes what we cal] 
an eternal and spiritual reality. 



40 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE WORLD OF OPPOSITES. 

It seems very hard to escape the conclu- 
sion of our last chapter. But the way of 
dualism now opens. I have already referred 
to it as an old and well-known track of 
thought. It undertakes to interpret the 
universe as at the same time structural and 
refractory, religious and diabolical. If there 
is a moral nature within us, is there not out- 
side of us a realm of things quite unmoral ? 
If there is a power that makes for righteous- 
ness, does not that power often seem to be 
fatally thwarted? May this not then be a 
sort of twofold world, as the old Persians 
conceived it ? May there not be two pow- 
ers or sets of powers in it? Is there not 
as much reason for believing in a devil as 
in God? 



THE WOBLD OF OPPOSITES. 41 

We have here dualism, or the world of 
opposites. This form of thought has ap- 
pealed to the imagination and has attracted 
bright and noble minds. It largely prevails 
in the world to-day. It doubtless fits a 
certain state of human development; it 
suits minds that are themselves passing 
through a transition period of their growth, 
and whose own lives are in conflict. I 
have suggested that Mr. Huxley was not 
so much an agnostic as he was a dualist. 
He was puzzled as he stood in the presence, 
as it seemed to him, of the two antagonistic 
forces of good and evil. He tried to believe 
in them both. His temperament, his educa- 
tion, the prevailing influences of his genera- 
tion, tended to strand him upon the rocks 
of a tremendous dilemma. 

I wish briefly to show why it is becoming 
impossible to take any double conception of 
the universe. In the first place, every item 
of knowledge of the outward world goes to 
show that its structure throughout is one, 
and not two. We can easily trace the two- 



42 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

fold conception of the universe to its begin- 
nings in men's first imperfect observations 
of natural phenomena. We can see that 
early men must have begun with thinking 
that there existed, not good powers alone, 
making the sunshine and sending harvests, 
but malignant powers also, covering the 
earth with storms, winter, and night, and 
sweeping life away. 

Slowly and steadily the mind of man has 
been pushed from the last vestige of consist- 
ent belief in twofold warring forces in 
the world without. Storms, winter, night, 
death even, have their orderly place in the 
course of nature. We would not seriously 
wish them away any more than we wish 
the sunlight or the summer away. What 
modern man can believe that the whirlwind, 
the lightning, or the fever is ever sent in 
anger ? The thought is growinglj^ incon- 
gruous with all that we know. Whether or 
not a man sees goodness in nature, it is im- 
possible to believe in good and bad powers 
at war with each other. There would not 



THE WORLD OF OPPOSITES, 43 

even be a universe or a constituted order, if 
any malign power were constantly bursting 
through the order and breaking it up. The 
plain meaning of the word '^ universe" is a 
world-order, including all things within it. 

The fact is, man is every day finding new 
uses for things that he once cursed — of 
animals, of soils, weeds, and trees, of pow- 
ers of nature. The area of what he calls 
good is always being enlarged. What sort 
of a Satan or Ahriman is it whose works 
only need to be studied and handled, and lo ! 
they are transformed into good? 

Take, for example, barbarous men's 
thought of the mountains and forests. These 
were places unfriendly to man. The moun- 
tains were the abode of the dreadful deities 
who hurled the thunderbolt ; the deep and 
gloomy woods were thick with dangers. 
Contrast with this early feeling of our fore- 
fathers the delight with which Alpine and 
Appalachian climbers seek out a way of 
approach to the most inaccessible heights, 
while thousands go to spend their holidays 



44 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

amidst the hills and in the depths of the 
woods. The mountains have became our 
friends. They gather the rainfall for our 
fields; they lift up their snow-clad heads 
for our rest and joy. The forests are our 
treasure-houses ; we tremble to let the ruth- 
less hands of man sweep them away. 

Moreover, there is really no sound phi- 
losophy in thinking that both good and evil 
wage war for the rule of the world. Is 
it eternal war ? Are the two powers, order 
and chaos, balanced against each other for 
ever? Not even the Persians thought this. 
They believed that Ormuzd, the good 
power, would win in the end. The fact is, 
that if goodness is infinite, evil cannot be 
infinite ; it must be limited and finite. This 
corresponds to all that we know of the facts 
of the world. The things that endure, the 
mysterious atoms, the moving forces, the 
universal laws, the flow of life, the light 
traversing space, — these are never called 
evil. But whatever Ave call evil is well 
named '' accident." Not that it is outside 



THE WORLD OF OPPOSITES. 45 

of the realm of law, but it passes by, and 
ceases, and is no more. The whirlwind cuts 
a swath across the prairie, but there is 
nothing malignant in its mighty energy. 
You look again presently, and the one en- 
during fact is the growing, healing life of 
nature. The whirlwind itself is the mani- 
festation of life. 

We saw that honor, truth, justice, love, 
possess an infinite value. In all times, and 
all spheres, we conceive that these values 
hold. But Avhat is so finite as selfishness, 
greed, dishonesty, and falsehood? They 
bring their own doom of futility. Complain 
as you may of the existence of evil, whether 
outward or moral, more and more it comes 
to be in the power of man to determine 
whether it shall do him the slightest harm. 
More and more frequently do the men ap- 
pear who set it at nought, and turn it into 
the service of good. 

Again, this twofold idea of the world 
is a menace to good morals. True, it has 
sometimes been splendidly u.sed. Men have 



46 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

been stirred to grapple with evil, as if in- 
deed they fought not merely with flesh 
and blood, but " with principalities and 
powers and the world-rulers of darkness." 
This made mighty fighters as long as fight- 
ing was the order of the day. But it made 
hate also ; it discouraged sympathy ; it 
always set a great host of men under the 
ban and wrath of God, enemies of the good. 
It split men into struggling sects. Cursing 
was answered back with persecution. War 
engendered war. Did humanity grow in the 
hearts of the men who chanted the maledic- 
tory psalms ? 

The new need is of men who have all the 
courage and the patience of the fighters, but 
who shall use their splendid qualities for 
something better than fighting. As the best 
skill of the physician is positive rather than 
negative — to raise the level of tlie health, to 
quicken the sluggish circulation, to nourish 
the life forces and make them stronger than 
disease, yes, to flood out disease with a more 
ample life, so in the moral realm the new 



THE WORLD OF 0PP0SITE8, 47 

rule of victory is to uplift, to help, to " over- 
come evil with good." This is the mightier 
way ; it can be demonstrated that it is by far 
more eflficacious. 

The twofold or dualistic conception of the 
world now stands in the way of this higher 
method ; it has become outgrown, and must 
pass away. We can tolerate no longer any 
scheme of things that separates men into 
the good and the bad, the saved and the 
lost, friends and enemies. If God is al- 
mighty and therefore has no enemies, his 
children have none. If meanwhile some are 
bad, then all are liable to the same malady, 
which calls for pity and cure. If some are 
good, then all have it in them to be good 
too. The conditions which surround us are 
universal conditions. Why is it that no 
modern man can tolerate the idea of an 
eternal hell ? It is because dualism is in- 
compatible with a moral universe. Its 
doctrine that evil stands off by itself, ex- 
ceptional, outside of the universal order, 
enduring forever, no longer fits the neces- 



48 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

sities of righteous men's thought. Why in- 
deed should any righteous man think the 
universe to be less truly whole-hearted and 
sound than he is himself ? If the man has 
learned in some measure to bring all things 
that happen to him into unity, why should 
he not believe in a universe, wherein all 
things likewise are brought into the unity 
of good? 

Again, the idea of a world of struggling 
opposites once seemed indeed necessary to 
explain certain things such as disease, pain, 
and sin. But there is no economy any longer 
in using this explanation. There is a better 
and higher way of accounting for the seeming 
struggle in life ; there is no need of bringing 
in rival deities, or serpent tempters. In fact, 
the idea of a world of actual opposites merely 
serves to appease the questions of children ; 
it confounds the adult intelligence at the 
outset. You cannot possibly admit to your 
thought a world forever in conflict witii 
itself, part good and part bad. You can 
believe in the light that casts shadows in 



THE WORLD OF OFPOSITES. 49 

the course of its doing the work of light. 
You cannot believe in the light as efficient 
and real, and imagine that the shadows are 
equally real. Give us more light and you 
banish the shadows. Take away all light, 
and the very word " shadow " has no signifi- 
cance ; its only meaning is more or less 
absence of light. I shall presently try to 
set forth a conception of the universe which 
makes dualism of any sort as needless as it 
makes materialism inconceivable. 

Are there readers who still wonder whether 
there is any use in thinking about the mighty 
problems of life, the universe, and human 
destiny ? Is it not enough, they perhaps 
ask, to perform our tasks like men, and not 
to ask questions, much less to dream of 
finding an answer ? No matter what kind 
of a world it is, whether good or bad, ruled 
over by Goodness, or swinging its way to 
blind death for all, nevertheless, it is good, we 
are told, to do well, to be just and merciful, 
to leave the world better for our living. 

In other words, it is good to act and live ex- 



50 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

actly as men would act and live who believe 
that goodness and love are eternal and uni- 
versal. If it is good to act thus, I submit 
to any rational mind, is it not good to think 
thus, and to feel thus? Is it good to act 
thus, even though no truth corresponds to 
such an ideal of life ? Then is it not good, 
and far better indeed, to act thus when we 
have found out that our ideals of such life 
spring from reality? Is anything good, if 
nothing is real ? Is not our faith in the 
right life grounded in a deeper faith, that 
the right life matches with a righteous uni- 
verse ? That right life and right thought 
and right feeling are one ? Does it not 
hearten us to the right life when we see 
that the right life is ours because first it is 
God's? That it only comes to us because it 
shines out of the life of the universe ? Surely 
it must be as good as it is necessary candidly 
to ask the grand questions which follow. 1 
believe that the answers that press back on 
our minds are as hopeful as the problems 
themselves are august. 



THOROUGH-GOING THEISM. 51 



CHAPTER IV. 

THOROUGH-GOING THEISM. 

There is a theology that fits barbarous 
minds. It is the first attempt of primitive 
men to understand the world in which they 
find themselves. It matches with barbarous 
manners, customs, emotions, and conduct. 

There are theologies that fit the minds of 
men in their various stages of progress up- 
wards from barbarism. The theology, that 
is, the thinking about the mysteries of life 
and death, is in each case something of a 
reflection of the mind of the people of the 
age. It matches their civilization ; it is not 
and cannot be far beyond their manners and 
morals, their science, their ideals and aspira- 
tions. If they are coarse and sensual, if 
they are selfish and avaricious, if they are a 
military people and hate their enemies, the 



62 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

theology that fits them has always had, and 
must have, sensual, selfish, and inhumane 
elements. Their God will be a God of war. 
Their heaven will be for their own indul- 
gence, and a hell will be provided with ample 
room for their rivals and enemies. 

There is a theology also that fits civilized 
men. There have appeared from time to 
time, in human history, beautiful natures, 
men of justice, peace, and sympathy, the 
first fruits of humanity. Such men have 
risen above the level of their times and fore- 
cast a theology that represented the ideals, 
the customs, and the conduct of mature 
and all-round men, of a perfect society. Are 
we nearer to true civilization than our car- 
ousing and quarrelsome forefathers ? Do 
we begin to catch sight of what a true 
civilization will be ? Do groups of men al- 
ready appear, like the spring flowers on the 
hillsides, gentle in their manners, broad and 
universal in their sympathies, devoted to 
truth, to justice, to the welfare of mankind ? 
If so, we must have a theology, that is, a 



THOROUGH-GOING THEISM, 63 

way of thinking about the universe, of inter- 
preting its mysteries, of answering the ancient 
master-question, — What is the chief end of 
man ? This theology must certainly be quite 
different from any of the theologies that have 
prevailed in the past. If there is any use in 
thinking at all, if there is any reality in re- 
ligion, there must be a theology that fits and 
expresses the life of civilized men. 

There are plenty of reasons why the 
attempt to frame a rational thought of the 
universe has hope and promise in it, which 
the best of men until lately would have had to 
forego. How could Athanasius, Augustine, 
Calvin, or Jonathan Edwards have fitted a 
humane theology upon the religion, the in- 
stitutions, and the barbarous traditions of an 
inhumane society, in an age of rampant 
militarism ? Jesus could proclaim a beauti- 
ful religion of trust, and hope, and charity. 
But how could Jesus have altogether freed 
his own mind, and much more the minds of 
his contemporaries, from the old paralyzing 
conception of a world of demons and hell-fire ? 



54 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

It is only lately that science has worked 
out the marvelous parable of the outward 
universe. How could the noblest religious 
thinker quite shake off the trammels of the 
ancient dualism, while as yet the world about 
him seemed the theatre of the warring forces 
of Ahriman and Ormuzd ? 

At the beginning of the nineteenth century 
the world found itself entering upon a period 
of remarkable growth, as when the boy 
emerges into the man. It was the era of a 
new industrialism, of wonderful inventions, 
of the control of inexhaustible forces, as if 
men were learning to share power with the 
Creator. It was an era of the accumulation 
of undreamed wealth. Commerce was bind- 
ing nations together. Ideals of democracy 
and human brotherhood were in the air. 
Science was about to show that the rocks 
under our feet were of one substance with the 
stars. A new pity was visiting prisons, seek- 
ing to save outcasts and slaves. With every 
throb of humanity came the pressure for a 
religion to fit luimane men. Who could now 



THOROUGH-GOING THEISM, 55 

be satisfied with a religion of dreary sabbatlis 
and long prayers, a religion that pronounced 
every child to be conceived in sin and born 
under God's wrath, a religion that doomed 
the vast majority of mankind to eternal tor- 
ment? 

The liberal movement in religion has 
naturally gone altogether in advance of any 
organization to embody it, much less of any 
system of thought to interpret it. The first 
effect of the milder atmosphere, in fact, has 
been simply to disintegrate the old theolo- 
gies. Multitudes of sceptical people are in 
the most orthodox churches. They have a 
hungry instinct for religion, with suspicions 
that truth and religion are at odds. Every 
community has its agnostics who confront 
the mysteries of life and death with a pa- 
thetic stoicism. The societies of ethical 
culture are trying to organize a religion of 
humanity without any theology. What de- 
nomination or organized form of faith is 
ready to set forth the religion of the future ? 
Ask leading laymen and ministers. How 



56 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

many of them are satisfied, heart and soul 
and mind, with their religion ? How few of 
the brightest young men and women in the 
universities are able to give an intelligent 
account of their religion in the face of scep- 
tical, agnostic, or materialistic companions ! 
How many of them have ever seen the way 
to meet their own doubts ? There was never 
so great a demand for a theology for civilized 
men. The duty of the age is that every man 
who sees, or thinks he sees, the beautiful 
proportions of religious truth, shall tell his 
vision. Let all tell it who can. 

I am aware of the odium that just now 
attaches to " system-makers." There is not 
a supporter of conventional and antique 
creeds who will not cast a slur upon the 
possibility of any unified thinking in religion. 
The dualistic conception of the world, that 
suited mediaeval society and matched its 
manners and morals', subtly survives in 
minds that have adopted the terms of modern 
science. " It is a world of mystery," men 
say, " of opposites and antinomies. Lo ! 



THOROUGH-GOING THEISM. 57 

The opposites each contain a truth." Did 
not many praise Mr. Kidd's strange antith- 
esis of faith and reason? Men are to-day 
actually adopting incongruous, irreconcilable, 
and quite unassimilable thoughts, precisely 
as their forefathers admitted irreconcilable 
deities into their pantheon. When the do- 
main of truth is thus handed over to the 
worship of irrationality, for what grotesque 
vagary or childish superstition may we not 
be invited to make room! Let us not fear 
then at the outset to discredit chaotic or 
nebulous thinking. Let us not be alarmed 
at the boldness of our venture. A civilized 
theology is simply the application of straight 
and fearless thinking — the characteristic 
method by which all civilization has pro- 
ceeded — to the deepest and most practical 
problems of human life. Let us not be 
frightened, if we think ourselves the makers 
of any system of thought. Let us not be 
frightened by any one, if we simply discover 
the order and unity which, whenever seen, 
satisfy our souls. 



58 THEOLOGY O^ CIVILIZATION. 

Our theology begins in an act of faith. 
This is the beginning of all philosophy, or 
rational thinking. We have a natural bias 
for order and construction. This is the 
nature of mind. We instinctively trust that 
things go together to make a unity. Our 
faith is that there are no real antinomies, 
that there can be no contradictory truths, 
but that every movement of thought is 
towards an ultimate harmony. To say that 
this is a universe, means that all things 
in it match, fit together, make order, and 
find significant interpretation in terms of 
thought. We have no absolute demon- 
stration of this magnificent proposition 
so as to silence scepticism about it. But as 
soon as we open our eyes. Nature gives 
hints of design or structure, and we hence- 
forth follow straightway the lead of our 
faith. The clearer the mind the more im- 
perative is its native and characteristic 
demand to find unity. We cannot easily 
think that this demand does not point 
toward reality. If the world is a universe, 



THOROUGH-GOING THEISM, 69 

why should it not tend to mirror itself thus 
upon our minds ? We go forth to examine 
it, and it answers to our faith in it. 

We also have a faith — it is a faith of the 
intellect — that truth is good and will be 
good to eternity. This faith is not a de- 
mand for our own comfort; it is another 
form of the demand for order and unity. It 
is doubtless rooted in experience, but it 
always transcends experience. Truth and 
good somehow belong in the same category, 
I think them together, as I think two and 
two into four. If they did not belong to- 
gether, the universe would break apart, and 
constructive thinking would cease. 

It is a matter also of faith that religion 
and reason are one. How could we know 
it in advance ? I am glad to confess that I 
have an instinctive bias that way. It is the 
mark of reason, not of insanity. Two and 
two cannot make four elsewhere and make 
five in religion. Chaos and chance cannot 
be an affront to our intelligence elsewhere, 
and become beautiful in religion. If the 



60 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

elements tell the truth under our hands in 
the laboratory, we cannot believe in a re- 
ligion that works magic with the same ele- 
ments, — that bids water, for instance, call 
itself wine. 

Let us frankly admit faith, that is, trust 
or confidence, to be a life element that we 
cannot get on without. As fruitful think- 
ing in every other direction proceeds from a 
faith or bias in favor of order and construc- 
tion, so the thinking of theology must pro- 
ceed with the same kind of bias or faith in 
favor of finding harmony, reason, goodness, 
at the centre of things. We must either 
choose a positive belief out of which all 
sane and constructive thought proceeds, 
or a belief with the minus sign, which, 
as we have seen, is intellectual suicide. 
The feeblest demand for religion, once 
thought out, thus becomes the demand for 
a religion so beautiful, so comprehensive, 
so rational, as to match and fulfil all the 
requirements of civilized men. My wish is 
to show, or at least to suggest, how the 



THOBOUGH-GOING THEISM, 61 

facts of life at once correspond to and 
substantiate our inborn confidence in their 
constructive value. 

I have intimated that the key to our 
most mature thought of religion is in the 
doctrine of a universe. To believe in a 
universe is to believe in theism, that is, in a 
good God. See if this must not be so. If 
we live in a universe at all, then everything 
enters into the unity. There cannot be two 
substances, mind and matter, as men once 
thought, the one more or less refractory or 
even in opposition to the other. There can- 
not exist together in a universe two opposing 
principles of good and evil, balanced against 
each other. There cannot be any room for 
independent and creative wills, actually 
thwarting the Good Will. 

If we say unity, however, we mean spirit- 
ual and not material unity. The significant 
fact in all the world is spirit. We mean by 
this the real and eternal things, — force, intelli- 
gence, law, will, life, — all of them unseen. 
To say the words " order," " unity," ^' good- 



62 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

ness," is so far to speak in terms of spirit. 
The unseen Reality, then, behind all things 
visible — the force, the intelligence, the crea- 
tor of beauty, the ruling Will — is spirit. 

We have a hint of this truth in our con- 
sciousness. The significant facts about our- 
selves are all interpretable into the terms of 
thought and emotion. These terms, such as 
duty, happiness, love, describe not matter, 
but spirit. Our true life is invisible. The 
body and its functions only serve and express 
the man's inner self. His own unity or per- 
sonality is not in bodily parts, but beyond 
sight and touch. We only say of the uni- 
verse what we say of ourselves. 

Is not the body, however, alien to the 
spirit? Do not matter and spirit, even 
though beside one another in the same uni- 
verse, belong to different realms ? We surely 
do not intend to rule out any facts, or to 
wipe out the conditions upon which life 
actually goes on. We merely say that 
matter and spirit cannot be alien to each 
other. The old motto Mens sana in corpore 



THOBOUGH-GOING THEISM. 63 

sano expresses the law and the fact. What 
modern man can deny it? At his best, body 
and soul, man's form and his substance, are 
one. 

All modern science has been impressing 
this lesson upon us. The elements of 
matter, says science, march together and 
coordinate, like so many divisions of one 
vast host. They go in order, number, and 
proportions. They are translated into terms 
of a common mathematical notation. There 
is nothing refractory about them in the eye 
of intelligence. Savage men thought them 
at war with each other. Childish thought 
conceived them as an encumbrance to spirit, 
hostile to goodness. We have assured our- 
selves that among all their countless atoms 
lurks no contrary force or disobedient will. 
No Satan or devil in any corner of the uni- 
verse ever swerves one of them from its 
orderly course. The old Greek doctrine of 
bodily harmony perfectly illustrates what we 
mean. All the poets tell us the same : 



64 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

" Nay, what is Nature's 
Self, but an endless 
Strife toward music, 
Euphony, rhyme? 

" Trees in their blooming, 
Tides in their flowing, 
Stars in their circling. 
Tremble with song. 

" God in his throne is 
Eldest of poets ; 
Unto his measures 
Moveth the whole." 

Shall we ask now the child's question, 
Who made matter? And the question that 
follows, Who made God? Is anyone not yet 
ready to use this word '' God " ? How then 
came this marvelous universe, traversed by 
light, illuminated with intelligence, throb- 
bing with life, dominated as if by a single 
will ? These questions urge us into a region 
of lofty thought, where time and space seem 
to pass away. It is given to man to think 
of eternity, to make valid distinctions be- 
tween the finite and the infinite, to rest in 
nothing less than the conception of uncaused 



THOROUGH-GOING THEISM, 65 

reality/. That which really is, we say, never 
began. That original Being out of which 
all life sprang, dwells in no temples made 
with hands, dwells in no starry heaven, and 
yet is wherever its manifestations are, its 
Words, its creations, its children. Grant 
for a moment the reality of infinite being, 
and we begin to conceive that all things 
are held from eternity in the eternal mind. 
To us they seem to unroll. To the infinite 
thought, past and present and future are 
.one. 

At our highest, we men experience some- 
thing of this stretching of our thought into 
the dimensions of eternity. In the hours of 
the largest insight we live in the lives of 
our children, we outrun their present mis- 
takes or pain, we foresee their entrance into 
the universal plan, we rest content for our- 
selves and for their sakes. The drama of 
life goes on, the panorama rolls by, we seem 
to see for the time, somewhat as the Eternal 
may see, the unity which brings every detail 
of the procession into significance. We, too, 



66 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

are not dwellers in the body alone, much less 
in a single vital organ. We go where our 
messages travel ; we are dwellers in the uni- 
verse, and citizens everywhere. Such experi- 
ences are not wild hallucinations of the 
senses. They are sane and intelligent, such 
as might be expected by men, the character- 
istic of whose existence is in spiritual terms, 
who on any rational theory must be children 
of the universe, that is, akin to its forces, at 
one with its life, in accord with its thought. 



THE GOOD GOD. 67 



CHAPTER V. 

THE GOOD GOD. 

Let us grant that there is an ultimate re- 
ality which constitutes our world a universe, 
which is essentially spirit, whose visible form 
and expression we call matter. What for- 
bids us from naming this reality God? The 
only hindrance is the traditional doubt, in- 
herited from the days of man's animalism 
and his childish and savage state, whether 
the unseen Power is altogether good. I for 
one cannot think at all and think anything 
else. Must I confess, driven by the facts of 
the world, that I see about me force, intelli- 
gence, order, beauty, unity? I must add 
Goodness, being led by an instinctive and 
overpowering sense that this follows. The 
truth is, we cannot conceive of intelligence, 
and especially an intelligence that leaps into 



68 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

forms of rhythm, music, order, and beauty, 
and not think that such an intelligence is 
good. Not to be good is to be irrational, 
futile, and hideous. 

We have seen that our world must be 
significant, or there is no philosophy about 
it. But the only philosophy that is signifi- 
cant is a philosophy of beneficence. Set 
this aside and you have set aside rational 
thought. The demand of our minds to find 
moral harmony or purposive goodness is 
exactly the same as is the demand to find 
order and unity. There is the same evi- 
dence for the one fact as for the other : they 
belong together. The superficial appear- 
ances are at first against both of these 
demands. 

Or again, here in our world the beauty of 
goodness, the infinite smile of love, actually 
appears. It appears in men at least. It 
gleams in the eyes of mother birds and of 
faithful dogs. It is the highest reach of 
intelligence, the most spiritual thing in the 
universe. Where does it come from ? The 



THE GOOD GOB. 69 

short answer is that it comes from the heart 
of nature. It is the manifestation of the 
mind of God. 

Schopenhauer has given the world a phi- 
losophy of will. But will in itself has no sig- 
nificance. What kind of will is it ? we ask. 
Is it self will? We men know how irra- 
tional self will is. Is it blind will ? That is 
no better than electricity. The animals ex- 
hibit a higher form of will than that. Is it 
ill will? That is foolish and chaotic. Why 
then must it not be good will ? 

Let us be bold now and assume, at least 
provisionally, and till some one can do better 
for our thinking, that good will is at the 
heart of the universe. Call it love, if you 
prefer, as the mystical writer in the New 
Testament calls it ; call it God. The names 
are one. Start, if you must, from the view- 
point of utter scepticism, and call this 
thought of God as Good Will merely a 
working theory. You will find it the only 
working theory from which you can make 
constructive thought. If you use it at all^ 



70 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

however, use it consistently and for all it is 
worth. Let it take you wherever it leads. 
Time enough to break with it when we run 
against the walls of contradiction or absurd- 
ity. Till then it will not hurt us. But 
what if it prove to be '' the way of life " ? 

Let us grant that the good will is infi- 
nite ; let us admit that beneficence must be 
its far-reaching design. Let us say of God's 
goodness that ''as the heavens are higher 
than the earth, so are his thoughts higher 
than our thoughts and his ways higher than 
our ways." Measure the love of a mother 
for her child, of a just man for his honor, of 
a patriot eager to die for his country, of a 
Christ's love for the suffering, and say 
these are but sparks of his goodness ; out 
of his abundant life they shine. If we 
believe in God at all, this is what we believe. 
If we say the name of God even provision- 
ally, this is what we must mean. 

Let us search farther and see what we 
mean by saying God. We mean that there 
is joy in the depths of being, as befits a victo- 



THE GOOD GOD. 71 

rious love. We mean that there is peace, as 
befits a Good Will that has its perfect satis- 
faction. Joy and peace are spiritual facts, 
like, will, intelligence, and love. Shall we 
add the contrast of suffering, and say that 
the Eternal Life in a real sense bears pain ? 
It is bold to say, but we are driven to say it, 
for pain, at least in the sense of sympathy, 
is a part of the unity of life. There is no 
love without suffering. This fact does not 
come from our human ignorance and incom- 
pleteness. It is of the nature of love at its 
wisest, and even when it foresees a victorious 
end. The mother suffers with the falls of 
her child, needful as these falls are. Who 
would wish it otherwise ? Who would cast 
out the law of pain from his own life ? This 
would be the diminution of the flow of life. 
It would deny the reality of love. Who 
would worship an impassive God? How 
could infinite love, then, escape the law of 
its own nature ? or, how could God's love be 
less complete than human love ? 

In calling God one, we have not ruled out 



72 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

the principle of the manifoldness of life, con- 
tained within the divine unity. We believe 
in no lonely deity. Let us use the terms, if 
you please, of the Hegelian trinity, making 
sure that it was never the trinity of eccle- 
siastical history. Here is the subject and 
the object, and a relation binding them to- 
gether. In other words, here first is God, 
the fountain of life ; here next is the object 
and end of his beneficent life in his children, 
in his sentient and intelligent creation ; and 
here again is what we know as the visible 
world, the link and medium of communi- 
cation between God and man. And yet 
these forms of life must exist together in 
the divine mind. The separation is only 
with us and for our sake ; it is the mark of 
our incompleteness. Beneath the infinite 
variety, the contrasts of light and shade, the 
distinctions, sometimes world-wide, or again 
subtle and delicate, whereby we know things 
apart, we catch sight of the ultimate fact of 
oneness throughout. 

I have intimated that the outward nature 



THE GOOD GOB. 73 

is a parable. Let us try this method of com- 
prehending it; for it is this method that 
especially fits the thought of an ideal or 
spiritual universe. When we say that nature 
is a parable, we mean that it constitutes a 
sort of language, through which the mind 
of God is manifested. This was doubtless 
what men meant under the name of Revela- 
tion. As at the best a man's body expresses 
his thought and his will, and fitly clothes his 
spirit, so the outward world expresses the 
life that dwells behind it. If this is so, we 
can see why nature is neither moral nor im- 
moral in itself. I take up a beautiful love 
story ; for instance, Adam Bede. The book, 
as I read it, touches every chord in my 
nature. But the letters and the pictures in 
the book have no more moral quality than 
the inkj types from which they were printed. 
There are pictures in the book that, taken 
by themselves, are ugly and distressing. 
They are none the less needful to the 
author's meaning. 

So with nature, the grand and single 



74 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

question is the interpretation of the book as 
a whole. Is it a love story? Then I am 
happy, even if the story of true love fails to 
run smoothly. Nay, I do not see how it 
could have been a story of love at all if this 
love had nothing interesting, thrilling, in- 
spiring, to accomplish, if there were no prog- 
ress in the story. The telegraph language 
is a succession of strokes and breaks. Could 
there be language without these varying 
intervals, without a law of contrast and 
rhythm ? Could the eye know the teaching 
of light and color, without shadow and dark- 
ness? Could God teach us then to know 
beauty in a world where visions of ugliness 
were never seen; to know order and har- 
mony where there was never the semblance 
of chaos; to hunger and thirst after good- 
ness, in a world where the body never could 
suffer hunger and thirst; to ''love mercy 
and walk humbly with God," in a world 
where no sight of cruelty or vain show or 
lordly pride was ever witnessed ? No ! If 
the universe tells a story at all, it must tell 



THE GOOD GOD, 75 

a significant story. I, for one, will not 
reject my book of life, because, beside hymns 
and prayers, it has tragedy also. I will not 
complain that it has many and various chap- 
ters. I will not quarrel because the scale 
of the story is colossal, nor because there are 
chapters of the book written in blood and 
tears, nor because the beginning is in the 
pangs of birth and the pains, hurts, diseases, 
and struggles of childhood. The question 
is. Is it a love story from God to man? 
Then the scale of the story and its marvels 
of incident and progress seem to me worthy 
of its author. I have a clue now to make 
the whole story beautiful. I would not dare 
to leave out a chapter. Aye, who of us 
really dares to leave out a page of his own 
life story? 

We are able now to modify and so better 
to understand the idea of the divine omni- 
presence. Men say that God is everywhere. 
But there is a pantheism that revolts us, as 
there is also a noble and inspiring pantheism. 
We do not mean, when we say that God is 



76 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

in nature, that he is everywhere in space and 
time the same, that all of God is everywhere 
manifest in visible and tangible things, that 
we see God as plainly in the rock or the 
thunder or the tiger as we see him in the 
face of the Madonna. This is the irrational 
pantheism. We have seen that nature could 
tell us no message at all, except by our rec- 
ognition of differences of more or less, 
greater and smaller, beautiful and repulsive. 
The story does not run on a level, but it 
progresses in interest. A civilized age ought, 
therefore, to exhibit God more completely 
than was possible in the ages of savagery. 
To make this clearer, let us suppose that 
the end and aim of God is to communicate 
to his children of his own fullness. What 
we are made to long after is the complete 
revelation of God, not power alone, nor 
power and mind and beauty, but beneficence 
also. The teaching of the outward nature, 
with its meager manifestation of God, be- 
comes therefore a constant spur and incen- 
tive to go to the heart of things and know 



THE GOOD GOB, 11 

all. Why are we dissatisfied with the reve- 
lation of God's power in the storm? It is 
only a single aspect of God. Why is the 
wild beast, the tiger, or the lion, though quite 
unmoral, repulsive to us ? Is there nothing 
of God in his superb strength, or his cunning 
intelligence? Where else does it come 
from? The wild creature is a parable to us 
of what a little power or a narrow intelli- 
gence is, without good will to order it. 
Why is the toad ugly to us ? The natural- 
ist surely finds something to admire in it. 
It is ugly to us because there is ideal 
beauty of form, with which the ungainly 
shape of the toad is contrasted. 

The broken limb of the tree fades and 
decays. It is a parable of the perennial need 
of every branch of the human vine to keep 
in perfect touch with its stem ; tliat is, with 
the life of God. How could we know any- 
thing of God, if he were alike in all things 
and at every moment? There is not an 
area of desert and drought on our planet, 
there is not a scene of pestilence or famine, 



78 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

there is not a pest or blight, there is not a 
story of shipwreck, that does not repeat the 
single refrain, that we do not know God till 
we know him in all his perfectness and in 
the unity of his goodness. We have already 
learned, on the side of our science, that what 
we call evil in nature is part and parcel of 
the universe. The spiritual doctrine, match- 
ing our science, is that the evil in nature is 
so much picture language through which 
man, the growing child, comes to understand 
his father's message. It fits the state of the 
child. As he grows in his understanding of 
the message, the evil disappears in the unity 
of the story. 

Does the sum of evil in the world seem too 
great? But who is to judge, if a law of 
contrasts exists, how strongly marked the 
contrast must be ? It must match the need. 
If love is the greatest thing in the universe, 
let us not complain if by all means, however 
stupendous, it is made clear that not to love 
is to die. Who rebels because, when God 
makes clay to live, and breathes into it the 



THE GOOD GOD, 79 

breath of spiritual life, he requires it to obey 
his own mighty law of effort, cost, and pain ? 
The master thought of evolution con- 
firms what we have said. The picture 
presented to us is a universe in process of 
growing. It matches the fact of man, a 
being who grows. The early aeons of the 
life of the universe display the titanic work- 
ing of force. There is nothing moral in the 
scenes of the carboniferous period. Yet 
from the first moment of the process, not 
death, but active, ascending, throbbing life 
is their great characteristic. If there is fear, 
there is joy too, as the great prehistoric ani- 
mals sport in the forests. Fear and hunger 
and pain are the spur to joy and life. Once 
grant that men Avorthy to be called '' sons of 
God ! " are coming into this wild, brute 
world, and there is no waste to complain of. 
The outward conditions grow mild as fast 
as man attains his manhood. The more 
fully he learns his lesson of God's infinite 
goodness, the less does he fear any outward 
evil. More and more he gains control over 



80 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

the forces of the universe, and commands 
them to do his will. As fast as he proves 
himself the son of God, he makes the whole 
universe his home, and walks erect as its 
master. This is law and fact. Let David 
Livingstone, walking up and down the un- 
known wilderness of the Dark Continent, 
fearless and joyous, bear witness to this. 

I may have seemed to speak as if the out- 
ward universe were only in thought, an ideal, 
but quite unreal world. I have not meant 
to say this. T know nothing more real than 
the realm of the spirit. I conceive of matter 
as simply the form of spirit. But the form 
is real. The last thing that I imply is that 
we can think the universe and its conditions 
away by force of will. They inhere in the 
mind of God. They are truthful conditions, 
upon which we depend. There is no magic 
by which we can make believe that our 
bodies are dreams, or set aside physical laws. 
The forces of the world, its laws, the whirl 
of its atoms, all these, despite Christian Sci- 
ence, are held fast in the eternal mind. 



THE GOOD GOB, 81 

We come now to the nature of man. 
What characterizes him as man ? All that 
characterizes God as spirit, characterizes 
man. There is in man, as in God, that 
which knows and loves and wills, revealing 
itself in outward form and expression. The 
reality is invisible. We never see our 
friend's real self. We only see him in what 
he does. This is the way in which we see 
God. It is as if man were a spark of the 
soul of the universe. How cam^e man, ex- 
cept as he came out of the life of God? 
Here is the truth in the religions that have 
represented man as God's child. What less 
can you say of him ? 

Shall we complain of the fact that man 
is not God, but only the child of God ? that 
at the outset he does not know himself and 
must grow to his stature in order to know 
God ? We answer as before : Grant man's 
divine destiny, grant that the universe 
marches on, as Paul writes, toward ''the 
manifestation of the sons of God," and all 
the travail of the ages is justified. Could 



82 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

we know God without this age-long travail? 
And what more do we ask than that 
we should enter at last into the fullness 
of the life of God? I know that there 
are curious metaphysical puzzles about 
these things, to which, I believe, there may 
be rendered metaphysical answers. How, 
for instance, it is asked, can man be of the 
divine nature who only was born a few 
years ago? I hold that there is a true sense 
in which every soul of us can say, as Jesus 
once said, '-' Before Abraham was, I am." 
We have all been in the thought of God 
from eternity. In the higher realms of 
existence the questions of time and space 
give way. I am not speaking, however, for 
the purpose of raising or answering meta- 
physical questions, but, rather, in order to 
set forth an actual, rational, and workable 
philosophy of life. 

There was a time, perhaps within histor- 
ical bounds, when no one could say of 
man what we are able confidently to claim 
to-day. What Assyrian, Egyptian, or 



THE GOOD GOD, 83 

Hebrew prophet had the facts at his hand to 
teach the doctrine of a divine man, as we 
may teach this sublime faith ? There was 
needed a type of Kfe that should combine in 
itself all that we hold needful to the perfec- 
tion of God. This is the doctrine of the 
Incarnation, or the God-man. There must 
be shown a man of whom it could be truly 
said, '' Very God of very God." I am un- 
able to make any supernatural claim for 
Jesus. I cannot make him real to my mind, 
as an absolute or unique being. I do not 
care to insist that he must have been the 
first specimen of a new type of manhood. 
As matter of fact, his name and life repre- 
sent, as fully as any one needs to see in 
one life, the great elements that constitute 
our thought of divineness. Tlie manly 
force, the mind, the will are matched with 
goodness or love. Here is one who has 
caught the love-message of the universe. 
We have assumed that good will is at the 
heart of the world. Here now is good will, 
dominant in the life of a man. There is 



84 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

nothing finite or measured about it. It is 
as inexhaustible as the infinite sources from 
which it springs. Here are the first fruits 
of the universe. In a man is the manifesta- 
tion of all that constitutes God. A son of 
God has come to consciousness, has entered 
upon his manhood. A man walks the 
earth, the citizen of the universe, unassail- 
able by evil, beyond the reach of fear. 
Whenever this type of man appeared, the 
love story from God to man began to grow 
clear. 

The beauty of our doctrine of the incar- 
nation is that, though it is told in the 
familiar words of the Bible, it does not de- 
pend in the slightest degree upon any par- 
ticular form of the story. The story of 
Jesus is credible, because as soon as that 
type of life once appeared, other flowers 
like it leaped into beauty, and shone along 
the march of human history, throughout all 
the toiling centuries. The springtime of 
man's higher life had arrived. Who is so 
poor to-day as not to know living men and 



THE GOOD GOD, 86 

women in whose faces we have seen the 
eternal? Yes, there are everywhere those 
who, at least m their highest moments, have 
known that God and man meet and are one. 
The men of hate, however many millions 
they may yet seem to number, are giving 
way in the world to the rule of the men of 
good will, the grown children of God. 
What is civilization but the reign of Good 
Will in the earth? 

The true doctrine of prayer follows im- 
mediately. Here is God seeking to com- 
municate his power and his thought to his 
child. The wide universe exists to carry 
the forces and the message of Good Will. 
What shall man do to catch God's thought 
and wield his power ? Shall he stand child- 
fashion and try to bend the infinite will to 
his selfishness ? This is not to be intelli- 
gent. This is to stand outside of the cur- 
rent, where the electric forces move. Let 
man, then, bring his little life into line 
with the almighty and beneficent motion. 
Let man find what God wants, as Abraham 



86 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

Lincoln once said, and try to do it. Let 
the Good Will throb in him, and lo ! in the 
moment when God and man are at one, the 
man rises to the height of his power and 
efficiency, his sight clears, his heart is at 
rest ; God speaks and he hears ; all things 
move to do his bidding. The man who 
loves, in the hour of true love, is copartner 
with God. The universe is framed to meet 
the prayers and designs of Good Will. 
Would you venture to pray for anything 
else or less than what love requires ? To 
live the life of good will is to be in constant 
communion with God. In this kind of life 
prayer and activity, religion and conduct, 
thinking, feeling, and doing are one. As 
the old saying was, Laborare est or are — "to 
work is to pray." 

We have an easy illustration of this law 
of prayer in every true home. The rules 
and the arrangement of such a home are for 
the welfare of the children and the guests. 
There is an order and a watchful care out- 
running the wants of the inmates with its 



THE GOOD GOD, 87 

thoughtful prevision. The parents know 
what things the children have need of before 
they ask for them. The little children, 
to be sure, freely tell their desires and even 
try to set the good order of the home aside, 
each for his own benefit. Let the little 
ones prattle as they may ! But as the 
children grow, a new idea possesses them. 
It becomes their wish and pleasure to co- 
operate with their parents, to help in carry- 
ing out their beneficent intent, to preserve 
the orderly and thoughtful arrangement by 
which all may be better served. The childish 
age of begging and teasing is presently fol- 
lowed by the companionship, sympathy, and 
communion of grown sons and daughters. 
What grown son asks things for himself? 
What does he want, once granting that he 
trusts his father, except what the father 
also wants? 

What we have said of prayer is the key 
to the true thought of providence. In the 
large sense, all things fall into the order of 
providence. If we live in a divine uni- 



88 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

verse nothing can happen which is outside 
of the purpose of the ruling Good WilL Is 
there then no '' special providence " ? Who 
wishes for special treatment, we answer, in 
his father's house ? It is a child's wish to be 
indulged as a favorite. On the other hand, 
if any one means by " special providences " 
that certain events — for instance, the re- 
pulse of the Persians at Marathon, the dis- 
persion of the Jews, the reign of King x\lfred 
of England — carry with them obvious sig- 
nificance, we go further and say that all 
events in human life are significant. Nothing 
happens to us which may not be translated 
into use, wisdom, beauty, or love. Let us 
not then be afraid to " trust in providence," 
that is, to feel confidence in the universe 
and all its events as divinely ordered. 

There are those who have actual expe- 
rience both of the meaning of providence 
and of prayer, or communion with God, 
in this high and perfectly natural sense. 
They are often among the clearest and most 
fearless thinkers. In fact, it is clear think- 



THE GOOD GOD. 89 

ing, as well as real life experiences, that has 
brought them to this conception of prayer. 
In their hours of fullest and most active 
life, they seem to themselves to be living in 
unison with the greater Life of the world. 
There is no other satisfactory explanation of 
the facts of their consciousness. The thought 
of the good God here rises to its most inspir- 
ing and practical form. It is the thought of 
the Eternal One, '' in whom we live and move 
and have our being." We rest in Him, we 
think with Him, we will with Him. 



90 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 



CHAPTER VL 

GREAT QUESTIONS. 

We now come to the most difficult of all 
questions. What, first, will our theology 
say about sin ? For hundreds of years the 
keynote of all the theologies of Christendom 
has been the doctrine of sin. Here was 
the tremendous mystery of human exist- 
ence. The outer world, with its terrors of 
darkness and storm, only shadowed forth 
the gloom of human disobedience, striking 
in the face of Heaven. The death of the 
body was a parable of the doom of souls. 
Let us not fear, as we have not feared 
before, to apply the solvent of our theism, 
the doctrine of a divine universe and the 
one God, to interpret the facts of moral evil 
out of the still prevalent, perplexing dual- 
ism and diabolism into the unity, where, if 



GBEAT QUESTIONS, 91 

straight thinking is the command of God, 
these seemingly discordant facts must surely 
belong. I know nothing more revolting to 
the sober, moral sense than the traditional 
teaching about sin. The comparative un- 
consciousness of sin in the Greek mind, 
unsatisfactory as it was, was hardly farther 
from reality. An almighty and wise God 
had brought into the world feeble and child- 
ish man, certain to disobey at the first whis- 
per of temptation, doomed in advance to 
become a criminal, and to lie henceforth 
under sentence of death. What a travesty 
of justice ! 

There is a solemn and tremendous word 
of the prophet Isaiah : " I create evil, saith 
the Lord." How can any one deny that this 
is the truth? If there is one God and one 
only, surely all outward ''evil " at least must 
be a part of his universe. Where else could 
it belong ? We have already seen that God 
could not have given the parable of love to 
a growing creature without what we at first 
call " evil." If God then is responsible for 



92 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

the outward world — his parable, our envi- 
ronment, our school book — how must he 
not be equally responsible for us, and all 
that we are? Are we not at the outset what 
he made us ? Are we not at each stage of 
the long course just where he expected and 
meant us to be ? Can our conduct ever take 
him by surprise? Can any act of human 
self-will, in its error and blindness, alter or 
baffle the course of the Eternal Will ? What 
indeed is the human will but a form or mani- 
festation of the one creative power ? At its 
very vv^orst, what is it but a tiny, meager, and 
feeble manifestation of only a little of the 
nature of God? If the material world, in- 
cluding the seeming evil of storm and pain, 
is a harmony, may not the moral world and 
its story in human history be all of a piece 
with the universal plan? It must be so, or 
the parable belies the reality, and construc- 
tive thinking must cease. Let us think this 
out with the utmost care. 

Our clue, as before, is in the thought of 
man as a progressive, growing being. If he 



GREAT QUESTIONS, 93 

begins in innocence, it is the innocence of 
the animal, the bird, or the butterfly. The 
animalism, the greed, the selfishness of the 
young child is no sin, or evil, but rather 
the ruling and necessary condition of the 
lower life. No one doubts this to-day. 
What then is the sense of sin but the con- 
sciousness of an ideal, above the animal life ? 
It is the mark of man's growth, the witness 
in him of a higher form of life. As a psy- 
chological fact, the sense of sin is feeble 
when men are ''wicked," and keen when 
men begin to be good. Who feels such pain 
for his sins as the man who sees the shining 
ideals ? 

It must be observed that we are not try- 
ing to wipe out or belittle a single fact of 
consciousness. We are seeking more care- 
fully to interpret the facts and hear the 
story which they tell. The earlier thought 
was that sin began with the act of man ; as 
in the old story of Genesis, with Adam's 
disobedience in taking the forbidden fruit. 
By one man's evil choice sin thus entered 



94 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

the world I But what shall we say of the 
unstable moral equilibrium of the man who 
only needed the touch of a single tempta- 
tion to convert him into a sinner ? If the 
man is wrong after the first sin, must /he 
not have been wrong before it ? What 
moral puzzles we make for ourselves by 
supposing that sin resides in and begins 
with a man's act! 

Jeanie Deans tells the truth and we praise 
her. The kind nurse in " Les Miserables " 
tells a lie and we praise her also. What is 
the fact, deeper than the choice, which in 
each case we approve? What is the fact 
without which the strictest truth or the 
most correct choice would win no praise? 
It is the love or good will, like the love of 
God, which shines through the act. To 
lack or to fail to express in our acts, our 
words, our lives, the characteristic attributes 
of God — his justice, his truth, his mercy, and 
especially his good will — is to do wrong 
and be wrong. To do wrong or be wrong, 
and at the same time to be conscious that 



GREAT QUESTIONS. 95 

we are wrong, — this is to sin. What is 
the controlling cause of sin? 

** 'T is life of which our nerves are scant, 
More life and fuller that we want." 

The pain and trouble that sin makes is the 
call for more life. Let this call become 
urgent, let the whole soul give itself to do 
the service of justice, to speak truth, to 
express all the love it contains ; even sin 
is thus made the means of a higher life, as 
pain bears a ministry of health. In every 
case sin, like pain, tells the story of low, 
deficient, or imperiled vitality. That I did 
wrong was only a symptom that my moral 
strength was feeble or immature. I was a 
child ; I had not yet got control of my 
animal nature. 

The significant fact in the so-called con- 
sciousness of sin is not an act, but a state. 
The acts accounted as sins arise out of the 
animal state. The man carries along with 
him, as he grows upwards, the survival of 
animal passions, appetites, and selfishness. 



96 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

Selfishness breaking into expression violates 
the growing sense of a higher life ; it hurts 
and pains. The pain marks growth. The 
sense of sin shows the transition from the 
animal life to the life of a son of God, from 
physical law to the law of the spirit. The 
march is long. The process is nothing less 
than the development of a race to the knowl- 
edge of God. The whole outward Avorld 
seems to share in the process. It is what 
some one has called the "martyrdom of 
man." But the moment that you say it is 
the natural order of God's world, it ceases 
to be a tragedy. 

Is man responsible for this tremendous 
world process ? Is man to blame for it ? 
How could man, started thus on the animal 
level, have behaved differently ? In fact, in 
a large sense, there is no blame. The re- 
sponsibility is with God, the informing, 
creative life. All justice disappears from 
the heavens when you lay upon tiny man 
the burden of sin. Must we not frankly 
say that God seems to use sin, or moral evil, 



GREAT QUESTIONS, 97 

precisely as in the outward world he doubt- 
less uses pain, the storm, and the earth- 
quake, to bring home to man the eternal 
message of goodness? In the long, larger 
view, as God sees, as we see at our best, the 
evil is only relative, but not real. Grant 
as before, that God fulfills his aim; grant 
that man climbs to the blessedness of love ; 
grant that light is the rule and darkness 
only the incident, that the evil sets forth 
goodness, as the shadows mark the light; 
there is no evil and therefore no blame in 
the final harmony. 

This is only to say that God is love, and 
that, as the old writer in the Apocrypha 
says, " He abhorretJi nothing that he hath 
created^ How could he hate anything, 
since all things must be expressions, more 
or less incomplete, of some attribute of his 
own ; since the feeblest and most imper- 
fect creature has in it something of the 
divine life ? God may pity and sympathize, 
but God cannot hate ; while life lasts he 
loves his own creatures, or he would not be 



98 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

God. Is not this good to believe ? Is it 
not more rational than to suppose that the 
Infinite Life expresses himself in beings that 
he disapproves ? What should we say of a 
man who blamed his own child for being 
only a child and not a grown man? Re- 
member, in this connection, the quaint and 
striking passage from Paul's speech on 
Mars Hill, apparently quoted from the wis- 
dom of Solomon : '' And the times of this 
ignorance God winked at," and the similar 
passage also attributed to Paul, '' Who in 
times past suffered all nations to walk in 
their own ways." Here is a very early 
recognition of the moral significance of the 
doctrine of evolution. 

Is not this teaching about sin very danger- 
ous? Will it not be paralyzing to the 
human will ? On the contrary, it carries 
with it a gospel, freedom from the bondage of 
sin, and inspiration to spiritual life. There 
is no teaching so rational, just, ethical, and 
helpful. The moral consciousness, once 
fairly interpreted, confirms it. We have seen 



GREAT QUESTIONS, 99 

that man, at his best and when full grown, 
is the manifestation of all that makes God ; 
at his best the whole divine life flows in 
him. This is joy and peace and love ; this is 
also efficiency. This is when the current 
is open between God and the soul. The 
man's will answers to the divine will. 
This is health, of which the bodily health 
is only a symbol. To miss or to break this 
connection, to lose the flow of the divine 
will in the soul, to have only physical force, 
passion, and appetite, with the controlling 
power of love intermitted, to be willful and 
selfish while at the same time we encounter 
the friction and resistance of other selfish 
wills, — this is to miss man's health and 
life, joy, peace, and freedom. As with the 
body, so with the spirit, the law is that 
debility or disease carries warning pain, 
unrest, fear, gloom, loneliness, misery. As 
no theory in medicine alters this physical 
fact, so no philosophy alters the beneficent 
law of spiritual life. No system of theology 
can make it anything but wretched for men 



100 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

to try to live without God and his inform- 
ing good wilL Not only man must suffer 
in living the feeble, meager, inhumane life 
of selfishness ; it is altogether good that he 
should suffer, till in sheer desperation at 
last he cries out, '' Who shall deliver me 
from the body of this death?" 

There is no way by which man can find 
how needful food is till he hungers for it. 
There is no way by which man can discover 
how blessed righteousness is till he hungers 
after it. What we call " the sense of sin," 
then, is another name for the pangs of this 
natural hunger. And where there has not 
yet been any hunger, sin has not begun. 
The whole end and aim of our theology, 
following the divine parable, is to stir and 
to satisfy this hunger of the spirit after 
goodness, perfection, the life of love. We 
do not blame men for what they were born 
into, their childishness and barbarism. We 
proclaim the gospel of a larger life, as 
when the sun and the air welcome the 
plant that peeps above the surface of the 



GEE AT QUESTIONS. 101 

ground. As the air is always pressing in 
every direction upon our bodies, so the 
life of God is always pressing from every 
direction and in all ways to possess itself of 
the soul of man. 

The fact is, that the world is still under 
the shadow of the dualistic conception of 
sin, as an attack upon God's universe, the 
work of an alien and malignant power. 
The sinner is thought still to be an enemy 
of God, and not his child. We are learning 
better than this in every civilized home or 
school ; we are learning better than this in 
our reformatories. The best experience, 
the best psychology and common sense are 
at one in this teaching. Why then in our 
theologies do we disfranchise sinners, that 
is, all mankind, as an alien class in the uni- 
verse ? Whereas, the sinner is merely a 
learner in a lower grade in the school, often 
only a baby in the nursery. Or, to use 
another parable, the sinner is sick and calls 
for hospital treatment. He needs intelli- 
gent nursing, a firm and kindly hand. He 



102 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

needs the atmosphere of hope, so as to be 
made to see of what world he is a citizen. 
He needs love, which is the essence of God's 
life. What good do you do your patient by 
harshness, anger, and the withdrawal of sym- 
pathy? Would you have done better, if 
you had been in his circumstances? Nay, 
if you had been in his circumstances, ex- 
ternal and spiritual, with his native disposi- 
tion, you would have been the same man. 
Tell him so frankly, or you run the risk of 
playing the hypocrite. 

Is this to condone the man's oifence, his 
lust or his murder ? Must we never brand 
outrageous crime? Must we not recog- 
nize vast moral differences ? Must we treat 
law-breaking with indulgence ? Must Ave 
not sometimes, however kindly, use the 
tonic of indignation ? To ask these ques- 
tions is to misunderstand my thought. 
The doctor does not treat all diseases alike, 
chicken-pox or a cancer, a cold in the head 
or an infectious fever. He does not let his 
patient go at large where he may harm 



GREAT QUESTIONS, 103 

others. He wisely alarms one patient and 
encourages another. He is shocked at the 
sight of terrible sores. Sometimes he uses 
the knife. The true theory and treatment 
of sin proceed on the same lines. We seek, 
as God seeks, not punishment but health 
and fullness of life. We have no enemies, 
as God has none. 

We yield to none in our pain, sorrow, or 
grief for acts of sin. Wrong-doing hurts 
every one. As no nerve cell in the body can 
be at fault without involving all the mem- 
bers of the body in loss of power and health, 
so no man can do wrong and hurt himself 
alone. The law for each and all is to be well 
and to grow. To disobey this law entails 
suffering for each and for all. Nothing but 
eternal beneficence imposes this law of suf- 
fering in which God himself must share. 

We see at once the place that penalties 
hold in a moral world. They are preventive 
and remedial. They are salutary barriers 
beyond which turbulent, venturesome, child- 
ish, or vicious life cannot be suffered to go. 



104 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

In the divine plan there can be nothing vin- 
dictive in them. So far as man follows God, 
so far as good will makes and enforces 
human laws, vindictiveness cannot be per- 
mitted to determine or direct our penalties. 
This does not mean that penalties may not 
sometimes need to be exceedingly severe. 
They are severe in nature. They must be 
severe enough to meet the gravity of the 
danger with which evil-doers threaten 
society. Society cannot play with burglars 
and train- wreckers. There is no kindness in 
letting hardened and conscienceless offend- 
ers prey upon the innocent. Pity these 
unfortunate men as we may, good will as 
well as reason demands that we vigorously 
restrain them from hurting the precious 
fabric of society. If we can restrain them 
and cure them, these very men will thank us 
for putting up barriers against their wrong- 
doing. If we are helpless to cure them, the 
duty to restrain them holds good, even as 
nurses restrain patients in the paroxysms of 
a fever. 



GREAT QUESTIONS. 105 

Has man then no responsibility? The 
wrong-doer is " responsible " in the sense 
that he is the man who must suffer the con- 
sequences that invariably go with wrong- 
doing. You convict him of sin ; you make 
him see that he is out of step with his com- 
rades ; that his instrument produces discords. 
The body feels pain ; you trace the pain home 
to the disordered organ or nerve cell. You 
lay your finger upon the seat of the pain and 
you say : " This must be set right, or the 
body will never be well." So the sense 
of responsibility traces moral trouble to the 
center of pain and finds out the individual 
life that needs to be set right. What more 
practical fact than this do you wish to 
secure by making the man responsible? 

There is doubtless a righteous '' blame " 
that we visit upon the wrong-doer. I mean 
that we purpose to make wrong-doing un- 
comfortable, and, so far as we can, impossible. 
Our blame is for the sake of the future, for 
the sake of the man whom we blame, as well 
as for society. The intent of our blame is 



106 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

not to make the man suffer for the past, 
much less to turn his face with remorse to 
the past, but to stir the man with a new 
determination never to do the wrong again. 
Our blame is remedial and preventive, or it 
is worthless. 

We do not believe in the kind of blame 
that insists upon the heinousness of the 
man's past offence, denounces him as an 
outcast, or urges that he could have done 
differently as easily as not. In this sense 
blame works greater mischief. It separates 
the condemned and his judges into hostile 
camps and puts them out of sympathy with 
each other. Who were the Pharisees in the 
New Testament times but the men who 
blamed and denounced others? Why did 
Jesus never blame the publicans and sinners ? 
And why did his pity win their hearts, cure 
them of evil, and change them into friends 
of God? 

Again, most men's blame is not just. 
Search the man's consciousness and see what 
was the matter with him when he did wrong. 



GREAT QUESTIONS. 107 

He was not himself at the time ; he was like 
a child or a sick man. Divers passions and 
appetites swayed and carried him off his feet ; 
subtle inherited traditions, a multitude of 
unseen influences and associations led him 
astray. Could he have taken the opposite 
choice and done right instead of committing 
the actual folly or wrong ? Yes, if he had 
known all that he now knows of the pain 
that the folly or wrong brought. But he 
did not know then what he sees to-day. As 
he was then, with the same environment, 
with the same motives playing within him, 
and the same passions surging up, without 
the quickening touch of what he has since 
learned of the cost of folly and wrong, who 
dares to affirm that he could have volun- 
tarily changed the course of his conduct ? 

What the man wants is not the blame of 
the Pharisee, but the help of the friend. He 
wants to see the difference between right 
and wrong, love and hate. He needs to have 
his intelligence quickened, his imagination 
roused, and his manhood awakened. He 



108 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

needs especially the broadening of his sym- 
pathies. If men could see what troubles 
greed, lust, falsehood bring upon others 
and what happiness their good will might 
make for others, they would scarcely 
wish to do wrong. Show men there- 
fore the truth, that ill will and self 
will are simply animal, childish, and barbar- 
ous, feeble and unintelligent. Show them 
that passion, lust, falsehood, injustice are the 
part that savage man — the half-grown man 
— plays; show them that good will is the 
strong will, the humane, civilizing, and vic- 
torious will, the will of God. How this 
truth takes the narrow pride and conceit 
out of us all and lifts us to our highest 
stature as men! Good will alone is life, 
safety, and peace. Let the best man in the 
world drop out of his connection with God, 
and cease to pour good will through his acts, 
and straightway he and the habitual sinner 
are on one level. Are we not all children 
alike, feeble, short-sighted, restless, when 
God is not in us and with us. Are we ever 



GREAT QUESTIONS. 109 

grown men, save when the mighty illuminat- 
ing, victorious force of the good will of God 
bears us along? 

But why does God need to let us do 
wrong ? Is it just that man should pass 
through a long period of childhood with its 
blundering and ignorance ? It is just, if it 
is only in this way that noble and beautiful 
lives can be developed; if God is thus 
training us to become his sons and daugh- 
ters ; if through all cost the beauty and glory 
of love shall be made to shine forth. It is 
just, if God is doing always all that he can 
for us all ; if his beneficent urgency is ever 
upon us. Is it not well to begin as children, 
if it is well by and by to be men ? '' And it 
doth not yet appear what we shall be." 
Neither must we ever forget that childhood 
and youth have their own compensations. 

What reason indeed have we to doubt 
that God is doing all that he can for his uni- 
verse? How could almighty Power do 
more than it does ? Could we ever become 
men without being children at first; or 



110 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

civilized men without passing through the 
barbarous, intermediate stage? Could we 
learn righteousness and all the higher values, 
without using the current coins of the world 
as our counters to practise with? To pro- 
pose these questions seems to my mind like 
asking whether two and two might not make 
five. Not even infinite wisdom can stoop to 
command an incongruity to become harmo- 
nious. No ! I do not ask that God should 
do more for his universe. Give me only the 
reasonable trust that the universe is signifi- 
cant, that our little lives enter into the divine 
plan, that the almighty mercy does not hold 
us to blame for the slowness of the world 
processes, that there is pity and sympathy 
for us in the depths of Being, 

*' That nothing walks with aimless feet, 
That not one life shall be destroyed, 
Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
When God hath made the pile complete." 

I hold that this is a reasonable trust, Avhich, 
once taken into the warp and woof of our 



GBEAT QUESTIONS. Ill 

thinking, ''makes sense" of it, and taken 
into our conduct and life makes health and 
beauty. 

Why, then, some one asks, shall we not do 
evil, since ''all things work together for 
good " ? Why will not men with such a 
doctrine sit down in idleness and wait for 
the slow processes of evolution? Why 
should men ever bestir themselves to do 
costly deeds of righteousness ? 

This was precisely Paul's question, as he 
felt his way towards this same conception of 
thorough-going theism that we now^ set forth : 
" Shall we sin that grace may abound ? " To 
ask the question is almost to answer it. 
Sin is childishness, folly, deficiency, disease ; 
righteousness is health, sanity, fullness of 
life. Shall I go back and be a child, or a 
savage, when once I have caught sight of 
what it is to be a man? I have entered 
the university, with all its treasures and 
privileges ; is it possible that I can now 
wish to go back to the boyish work or the 
boyish idleness and mischief of the primary 



112 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

school ? When once a man has caught the 
idea of what the good life is, wrong life 
becomes intolerable. As the old writer 
says, '' He that is born of God cannot com- 
mit sin." In other words, good will, pos- 
sessing us, excludes sin, as health excludes 
disease. Who ever commits sin in those 
hours when he does the bidding of a broad 
and intelligent love ? 

Nay, more; our doctrine forbids the 
custom, common among many good men, 
of finding excuses for fashionable wrong- 
doing, for snatching after money or office, 
for compromise with principles, for slavery 
and war. You may forgive barbarous men 
for doing barbarous things. How can you 
who know better stoop to do such things 
yourselves ? How can you who have gradu- 
ated from the grammar school and have 
entered the high school or the college use 
your influence to keep back other learners 
in the lower grades of the great school of 
life ? You are bidden to help civilize men. 
How are you who know what civilization is 



GBEAT QUESTIONS. 113 

able to hold up your heads or to be happy, 
while you are using the tools of barbarism? 
A divine pressure is upon you. You cannot 
be happy while you hold back yourselves, or 
hold others back from the highway of life. 

See now how naturally and beautifully the 
one divine force of Good Will works to cure, 
to save, to educate, to uplift. Set down 
among men in the most abandoned or savage 
community, a living revelation of goodness, 
of truth, and probity, and straightway it is 
as if you brought sunshine and air into the 
fever ward of a hospital. He who loves and 
does good stirs others also, by an irresistible 
contagion of goodness, to love and to do good. 
He whose life is in line with the eternal cur- 
rent brings other lives, by induction, as it 
were, into the same movement. This is the 
universal law of atonement. Jesus' life is 
the typical instance of how it works. Love 
or good will, wherever it acts, lifts men out 
of their separateness, and binds them to- 
gether. In this sense, " health is catching." 
Who has not experienced it ? This inspiring 



114 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

and saving good will is the highest power iri 
the universe, costly in effort, venture, and 
sacrifice. It never withdraws its friendliness 
from any human soul. It acts in sympathy ; 
it is grieved at men's pains ; it shares their 
burdens. Did we not say that the Eternal 
Love must needs have in it an element of 
sympathy, a capacity of suffering with its 
children, or else it could not be love ? 

We march on now directly to state the 
true and philosophic doctrine of " the for- 
giveness of sins." What does God want, or 
what does any one desire of the wrong-doer, 
whether child or savage or reprobate, more 
than that he cease to do evil, that is, to live 
the animal life, and begin to do well, or to 
live the life of a son of God ? Justice, 
human or divine, wishes no continuance of 
suffering, asks for no retribution ; it only 
asks that the man shall act and grow and 
live as a man. The moment that he begins 
to express good will instead of ill will or 
self will, the moment he turns from hurtful 
to helpful activity, the moment the stream 



GREAT QUESTIONS. 115 

of the divine life flows in him, all righteous 
human society and 'Hhe angels of God" 
approve and delight in him. There is '' no 
condemnation " to those who live this kind 
of life. What can harm the friendly soul? 
Who would touch it with penalties for the 
past ? Here is gospel for every one. It is 
as free as was the gospel which the primi- 
tive Methodists preached. It is in accord 
with the fundamental laws of human nature. 
It is divine, though without magic or mira- 
cle. It proclaims the natural growth of the 
soul from the animal and the child to the 
man. This growth is like the movement 
of the plant life from the darkness under 
ground to the light and air of heaven. 

There is a gospel here in what once 
frightened men. We see now w^hat really is 
meant by the ''sovereign" or determining 
will of God. Jonathan Edwards and the 
Calvinists almost caught the truth. Their 
mistake was in their dualism. They taught 
that God's will worked in opposite ways to 
kill and to make alive, to love some and to 



116 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

damn others. But God's will works one way- 
only. The will of God is life eternal, bind- 
ing the world over to goodness, electing and 
foreordaining mankind to sonship. Find a 
soul where the omnipotent will does not thus 
act and urge, find a finite will that can really 
oppose it, and you have moved out of the 
universe. 

I shall be reminded at once of the Neros 
and Borgias, of Jesse Pomeroy and the 
Jukes family. There are cases of wicked- 
ness — sheer animalism — that are doubtless 
the results of disease, physical deformity, 
insanity. Here is the wolf, the tiger, the 
hyena, the ape, in human form. There seems 
indeed reason for infinite pity that such 
creatures as these must exist, for their little 
time, in an infinite world. God surely does 
not hate them. The best men have already 
learned not to hate them, but to bear with 
them; if possible, to strive to cure them; by 
all means to be warned to overcome the con- 
ditions that beget them. Even the " worst " 
men are not allowed in vain. They are 



GEE AT QUESTIONS. 117 

surviving types of savagery ; they drive us 
to outgrow the savage state, and so to make 
such men some day impossible. Who does 
not love righteousness and mercy all the 
more because of the stories of Judas, Tor- 
quemada, Aaron Burr, and Benedict Arnold ? 
Who does not now see, even in these typi- 
cal instances of moral tragedy, what divine 
material is present in men's souls, only wait- 
ing the touch of the right kind of power to 
blaze up into moral life ? 

Let us recapitulate the interpretation that 
certain well-known and important facts take 
on when once carefully examined. 

Duty, in general, is the pressure of the 
infinite good will upon man's moral life to 
make him grow and realize himself and reach 
full-grown manhood as the child of God. 

Conscience is man's sense, more or less 
keen, of the pressure of duty and its unyield- 
ing obligation or " oughtness." The action 
of the conscience in each particular instance 
depends upon the inheritance, the education, 
the intelligence, the environing circum- 



118 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

stances, upon a thousand subtle influences, 
both outside of the man and within him. 
Improve the circumstances, moralize the 
education, broaden the intelligence, wake 
the man's higher nature, spiritualize the 
influences that play upon him and within 
him, and you more and more surely bind 
and determine the man's action toward 
righteousness, toward the furtherance of the 
social welfare, toward moral health. 

The sense of sin is the man's distress or 
disquietude at seeing ideals which he fails 
to realize, or from which he is lapsing ; it is 
the natural prick of pain which attends the 
man who does not yield to the universe 
pressure of duty. 

Responsibility is the man's recognition 
that certain painful consequences to others 
as well as to himself, follow wrong acts and 
are inseparable from them. Responsibility 
says in each case, " Thou art the man ; take 
heed to thy steps ; amend thy ways ; no per- 
manent peace can ever be thine in the path 
of wrong-doing." 



GREAT QUESTIONS, 119 

Repentance is the man's sorrow and pain < 
at the hurt which wrong does. To repent 
is to own that an act was wrong ; it is to 
say : '' If I had known and felt then what 
I know and feel now, I would not have 
done the wrong; I therefore will never do 
it again." 

Blame is the pressure or resistance that 
other men instinctively set up against the 
wrong-doer to disapprove, condemn, and 
prevent his hurtful acts. It is the voice of 
the consciences of others, who for the time 
put themselves in the place of the wrong- 
doer. It may or may not be attended by 
sympathy. If it proceeds without sympathy, 
it becomes itself blameworthy. Surely to do 
wrong is pitiable, since every form of wrong 
proves a loss of the life of God through 
which men live. 

Forgiveness is the peace of mind that ° 
comes whenever a man passes out of his 
ill-will and the isolation of his selfishness 
into the ampler air and sunshine of the 
universal Good Will. The man is now at 



120 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

one with God and with his fellows. Even 
while he still suffers certain indelible con- 
sequences of wrong-doing, like the scars of 
a wound, the natural flow of health and 
gladness is restored. 



BATIONAL OPTIMISM. 121 



CHAPTER VII. 

BATIONAL OPTIMISM. 

Life is in some real sense a struggle. 
How shall we interpret this fact into the 
terms of a divine universe ? The old con- 
ception was that malign powers opposed 
man in his struggle and interfered with his 
liberty. There was an unseen adversary 
who hated and thwarted him. We have not 
only found no evidence of the existence of 
any enemy of man, but we have not found 
any space where he could hide himself. 
What then constitutes the fact of man's 
struggle ? We answer that there is a law of 
cost or effort as universal as life. It in- 
volves a struggle, but there is no bitterness, 
enmity, or opposition behind it. It is as be- 
neficent as the sunshine. All zest and high 
joy in life depend upon it. What do we 



122 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

truly value so much as that which has cost 
us effort ? Love itself grows by this law of 
cost. Civilization is its product. Think 
for a moment; ask yourself whether you 
would choose or respect a world in which 
all . cost and effort were ruled out. No 
poets would sing in such a world as that. 
This law of effort and cost carries with it 
a wonderfully hopeful extension of '' the 
doctrine of the atonement." This doctrine 
in its original form seemed incongruous and 
often offensive. It was said that Jesus' 
sufferings paid or offset the penalties of 
all men's sins. This shocked men's moral 
sense as arbitrary, unfair, and incoherent. 
See, however, what Jesus' sufferings actu- 
ally accomplished. Here was the darkest 
tragedy in human history: the best man 
who lived was brought to shame and death, 
and sacrificed in the midst of his career. It 
must have seemed for a few days as if evil 
sat on the throne of the world ; justice and 
mercy had been defeated. But this seemed 
so only till the clouds lifted and men, look- 



BATIONAL OPTIMISM, 123 

ing around them, were able to see what had 
happened. What had now come to pass? 
From the hour of Jesus' death onward there 
was a new influx of righteousness, mercy, 
faith in God, love for man, hope of human 
progress and of immortal life. These pre- 
cious fruits grew immediately wherever the 
story of the great tragedy was carried. 
Surely this is a universe where evil is but a 
changing form ; goodness is the most vital 
and enduring of all things. What a splen- 
did message even evil is made to bring, when 
it has been transmuted through a good man's 
life into the permanent structure of right- 
eousness ! 

The story of Jesus' sufferings is typical 
and illustrative of what suffering everywhere 
is destined to do. There is no sufferer who 
stands alone or bears pain for nought. As 
Jesus made the world richer, so households, 
villages, states, and nations are daily en- 
riched by the courage and patience, often of 
humble and unknown men and women. In 
a large sense it is always true that "the 



124 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

blood of the martyrs is the seed of the 
church." I mean that every species of hero- 
ism goes to the making of a nobler humanity. 
The law of cost and effort means that 
there is a certain amount of toil, patience, 
disappointment, obloquy, and pain involved 
in lifting the world from the animal level to 
the heights of manhood. Who would wish 
to be let off from bearing his share of this 
needful burden ? Who would be so mean 
as to seek to escape the law of ascending 
life, and to throw the more weight upon 
others ? 

*' Then welcome each rebuff 

That turns earth's smoothness rough, 

Each sting that bids not sit nor stand but go." 

This is not to forbid the attempt to pre- 
vent suffering. We are always at work to 
save and economize labor both in the out- 
ward world and in the realm of moral effort. 
We are set to learn the most direct ways 
upward, to reduce needless friction, to dis- 
cover and to apply the reserves of power in 



BATIONAL OPTIMISM. 125 

nature, to cooperate more effectively. We 
labor the harder in order that others who 
follow us may do their work to better advan- 
tage, with greater economy ; Ave suffer our- 
selves so as to remove the occasions of suffer- 
ing. But always, as we rise above the grosser 
forms of toil and suffering, new ideals stir 
us to new and more refined forms of effort. 
We do not escape the law of the universe ; 
w^ simply enter upon the study and use of 
higher values and new modes whereby the 
eternal Good Will expresses itself through 
us. 

We have now established a beautiful 
doctrine of human freedom. Man's freedom 
is like the freedom of God. And what is 
God's freedom ? Is it to do as he chooses ? 
Is it to be evil and feeble ? Is it to do harm 
and be revengeful, to be changeable and vac- 
illating ? No one will say that God's free- 
dom consists in his being other and less than 
himself. His freedom is to express himself, 
his beauty, and his goodness. His freedom 
is to show his good will through his creation. 



126 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

It consists in the nnalterableness of his ben- 
eficence. Man's freedom is to be the child 
of God, to serve as the willing channel of 
his beneficence. It is man's glory to show 
love and to do the deeds of the unalterable 
Good Will. There is no freedom except this 
characteristic freedom of intelligent, loving 
spirit. He is most free who is bound by 
every motive of his nature to do God's bid- 
ding, whose nature thus gladly expresses 
itself. He is free who can cheerfully take 
his burden of toil, effort, or pain, and even 
more than his share, as Jesus did, without 
repining or bitterness. He is free whose 
delight it is to work the divine miracle of 
changing evil to good. He is free who feels 
no temptation to do an injustice or tell a 
falsehood. Men do not inherit freedom by 
physical birth. The free, joyous, restful 
motion of the soul is an attainment; it 
demands a moral and spiritual birth or 
awakening ; it marks the fulfillment, not the 
beginning, of human life. 

Or does any one dream that the animal 



RATIONAL OPTIMISM. 127 

man, only half-informed with God's life, 
swayed by passions, blinded by prejudice, 
thwarted by circumstance, full of restless 
discontent, enjoys actual freedom? Can 
any one seriously think that these millions 
of little wills, vain and helpless without 
God, originate action, and exercise each an 
independent authority? The very state- 
ment refutes itself. Who desires such free- 
dom? The only use for it that was ever 
discovered was the mediaeval theologians' 
necessity to find creatures for hell. 

Moreover, the arrogation of independent 
wills is the fruitful source of human pride 
and conceit. Pride grows out of the 
thought that the individual willed and orig- 
inated his own excellence. You were good 
while the other was bad. You told the 
truth while the other lied. You won praise 
while your fellow was censured. Did you, 
then, make your own more excellent nature ? 
Did you compel the circumstances of your 
birth and training ? When was there ever a 
motion in you that arose uncaused and un- 



128 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

related, that was not a throb of the universe 
life, beating in you? Search consciousness 
through, and you find no such original 
motion on which to base a thrill of pride or 
superiority. Do you love virtue ; do you 
love men ; do you trust God ? Have the 
great, precious prizes of life — faith, hope, 
and good will — fallen to you ? Be glad in 
them as you are glad of the sunshine. Give 
the glory to God for them, as you thank 
him for the air you breathe, and go forth 
with your beautiful gifts to share them and 
proclaim that God intends them for all. 

Does some one object that this is "de- 
terminism"? Let us not be alarmed by 
names. There is a determinism to which 
one well may object. That our lives are 
hurried along by a blind fate, that we our- 
selves are only the resultant of a mad dance 
of atoms, that we are only what an un- 
known force makes us — against this kind 
of determinism or fatalism the instinct of 
life and truth revolts. This is materialism, 
the fault of which is that it considers only 



BATIONAL OPTIMISM. 129 

the outward aspects of life. There is no ob- 
jection to a moral or spiritual determinism 
that binds all things over into the unity of 
good. Would you not like to have your life 
ordered for you by a superior and beneficent 
wisdom? Do you imagine that you can 
thread the unseen paths of the universe by 
your own skill? Is it not good to know 
that "a God orders the march"? 

We have now a natural and rational 
ground out of which rises the doctrine or 
the hope of immortal life. Once grant that 
man's nature is akin to the unseen and self- 
existent life of the universe ; grant that man 
truly shows himself man, as God shows 
himself God, through intelligence and good 
will, and that all the lower manifestations 
of his life have their key and interpretation 
in these higher terms ; grant that this divine 
nature is latent in all men, and all the 
reasons which on the animal side seemed to 
point to death as the end of human exist- 
ence pass over at once* into the harmony of 
the conception of the victorious and eternal 



130 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

life. You are no longer afraid to recognize 
the facts of the physical life ; they are so 
many means to a nobler end. You have in 
man now what is worthy of eternity. You 
see men who, like Jesus, Paul, and an in- 
creasing host of witnesses, have entered here 
into the consciousness of a life at one with 
God. Even common men have moments of 
such full and royal life. All this is rational, 
ethical, and spiritual. The grand and mar- 
velous conception fits into the idea of a 
divine universe, as the keystone fits into the 
arch. The prophetic movement of all life 
upward, each step ascending toward the 
heights, each individual and race living and 
dying, never alone, but rather for the sake 
of something above itself, — here has justi- 
fication in spiritual terms. It has no con- 
ceivable justification in the terms of reversion 
and death. A million years of material prog- 
ress, confronting blank death for the race 
and the world at the last, could not befool 
us into a single thrill of satisfaction in so 
futile a universe. The demand is not for 



RATIONAL OPTIMISM. 131 

our sakes that we may live. It is the 
demand of the soul for God, and a worthy 
God. Who of us would not be willing to 
perish forever, if that were possible, rather 
than that the glory, the integrity, and the 
truth of the universe should pass away? 
Yes, the majestic demand is in nature, writ- 
ten in our intelligence, a life factor along 
with our faith and our love, without which 
life droops. Because it is in nature, because 
the universe is not whole without it, because 
it fits to its place in the harmony of rational 
thought, we hold it true. 

We hold this great hope to be true, because 
it goes with all our morality. Why must a 
man do right ''though the heavens fall"? 
Why must a man forever deny that any 
end, however lofty, can justify unrighteous 
means ? Why must a Jean Valjean, for ex- 
ample, spoil his good business, dismiss hun- 
dreds of working people, let the prosperity 
of his city go to wreck, and disappoint the 
confidence of his friends, rather than act a 
single lie and send an unknown tramp to 



132 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

suffer a little undeserved punishment? Not 
because the man is afraid of an endless hell 
as the penalty of his doing wrong. Not 
because he expects to win endless heaven 
for himself as the price of doing right. The 
reason is deeper. It is because the structure 
of the universe is righteous. It is because 
right and truth move on eternal and uni_ 
versal lines. It is because man is persuaded 
that his life is of the universal structure, 
and rests upon eternal foundations. The 
moral structure of the man allies him with 
God. Therefore the eternal hope is a part 
of his nature. The universe is of the realm 
of spirit; the man is the child and heir of 
that realm. There is that in him which is 
not subject to death. 

Under what form shall immortality be 
compassed ? men ask. Some imagine it under 
quite material forms ; some think that we 
shall presently detnonstrate it and pin it 
down with the tests of science. If so, it 
will be well. Whatever is found true will 
be good to know. I, for one, care little for 



RATIONAL OPTIMISM. 133 

such expectations. Here and now is life 
eternal, with gleams of inexhaustible possi- 
bilities around and beyond us. The man 
is as yet immature in life experiences who 
does not know of a quality in the noblest 
moments of this life that seems to transcend 
time and space? For me, one world at a 
time is enough. That it is God's world 
takes away all fear of death or evil. 

I seem to hear again the mutterings of 
doubt. The thought of a good God and a 
good universe, to our lower moods, is too 
beautiful to be true. It does not indeed fit 
with our lower moods. Why should it? 
They are the moods of animalism, of narrow 
sight, of incomplete life and health. In 
calling this the theology of civilization, I 
implied at the first that it fitted civilized 
men at their best. The appeal of the argu- 
ment is always from the lower mood of the 
man to his higher self, to his mood of in- 
sight, when he is at his best. It is no objec- 
tion to our theology that there are hours 
when it seems too good, too simple, too beau- 



134 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

tiful, too rational to be true. These are the 
times when we stoop below the stature of 
full manhood ; these are the spiritual Golgo- 
thas and Gethsemanes, when, for the time, 
the light is shut off. The real question is 
whether this splendid theism does not seem 
true when our sight of truth is clearest and 
the full tide of life possesses us. 

In the first place remember that we have 
made trial already of other thoughts of the 
universe. We have tried pessimism, mate- 
rialism, dualism, agnosticism. Who that has 
carefully followed each and all of these paths 
has not been blocked at last with the warn- 
ing sign ''No Thoroughfare"? They all 
bring rational thinking to confusion. 

Now, then, let us apply the great " mono- 
theistic " thought, as Mr. John Fiske likes 
to call it. Let us see how wonderfully it fits 
together. It is not the narrow logic of a 
bare chain ingeniously forged to connect in- 
congruous things. It is the logic of a Avork 
of art, a statue, a temple or a symphony, in 
which each part has its constituent place. 



RATIONAL OPTIMISM. 135 

It fits the mind and gives rest and satisfac- 
tion. Yes ! the mind says : In the thought 
of God " all things work together for good " 
for his children; the lines of the universe 
here converge and make unity. 

Our theology fits the needs of the human 
emotions. With infinite, intelligent, and 
beneficent Good Will on the throne of the 
universe, there is something to worship, re- 
vere, and love. Our natures are made to 
thrill with gladness at this thought. The 
lower passions and appetites in us, being 
brought under the sway of the ruling good 
will, here find their due use, their subordina- 
tion and balance. The self love of the child 
here rises, at the age of dawning thoughtful- 
ness, into the range of a universal sympathy, 
and has a noble renewal and transformation. 
The Greek love of beauty and bodily form, 
the Roman ideal of order and law, the He- 
brew righteousness, the Oriental longing for 
rest and peace, the Germanic instinct for 
struggle and freedom, all have place together 
in the ideal of the full-grown and civilized 



136 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

man, the child of God, heir of the forces and 
the wealth of the world. 

There is a natural harmony which ought 
to prevail between the outward organization 
and the inner life. Thus the bodily organism 
at its best is never alien to the good spirit, 
but is really its servant. Good will, which 
is the health of the soul, tends to promote 
the health of the body. In other words, he 
who is wholly a man, whose body serves 
his spirit, who holds the secret of self- 
control, whose energies move for a noble 
purpose, whose temper is restful, fearless, 
and gladsome, commands the central con- 
ditions of physical as well as moral health. 
Though the statement of this law is capa- 
ble of foolish exaggeration, few yet compre- 
hend its fruitful and vitalizing suggestive- 
ness. 

The process of civilization falls under the 
same law of harmony. Civilization is man's 
adaptation of all sorts of material and out- 
ward means to express and to develop large 
and joyous character for the individual and 



RATIONAL OPTIMISM. 137 

for society. History is the record of this 
process. The problems of the modern world, 
the relation of social classes, the distribu- 
tion, use, and enjoyment of wealth, the func- 
tions of government, the possibilities of a 
true democracy, such questions of public 
morality as modern nations face, all find 
solution in the ideal conception of the life 
of man, possessed with the divine good will. 
Ethics is the application of this good will 
under varying circumstances, and on the 
straight lines of truth and justice. Human 
laws and institutions are the registration of 
the successive waves of the rising tide of the 
ethical life. The forms change from age to 
age. The love of God flows ever more fully, 
as man grows to the stature of manhood. 

More than all else, our theology com- 
mands, involves, matches, and fits a certain 
noble and civilizing type of life for each in- 
dividual. It is nothing if not ethical and 
practical. The stoutest Calvinism was not 
more strenuous than this theology of civili- 
zation. Seize it if you please at first by 



138 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

the grasp of the intellect; pronounce it, if 
you must, a splendid possibility ; assume it 
for the time as a mere working theory, the 
demand comes straight whenever you face 
it, to do and be that which the beautiful 
thought consistently requires. You cannot 
be mean, cowardly, selfish, untrue, in God's 
world. You believe that Good Will reigns 
in it. You must go over then to the life of 
Good Will and behave as its child. All il- 
lustrious conduct grows out of this daring 
resolve. 

I have called this theology a rational opti- 
mism, but it is neither narrow nor easy- 
going. It never says that things are well 
enough as they are. It is never content with 
present conditions or the fashionable abuses 
of the times ; it never apologizes for barbar- 
ism, for " vested rights," concealing ancient 
wrongs, for the gambling of the stock ex- 
change, for the subjugation or extinction of 
'' inferior races." This would be to cease 
growing and attaining. But the watch- 
words of our optimism are growth, movement, 



BATIONAL OPTIMISM, 139 

vigorous and manly endeavor, sympathy, and 
humanity. We hold that the world in the 
divine plan is good ; we hold that it is good 
to live in it, and to give our lives to bring 
this plan about. Our optimism fixes our eyes 
upon the shining heights beyond us ; it 
heartens us, emboldens us, and braces us for 
our tasks. It gives daily something to do. 
It takes hold upon the details of every 
man's common work and lifts them into 
their place in the divine order. As every 
private soldier in a patriot army is a sharer 
with the commander-in-chief, so every man 
and woman may be a sharer in doing the 
works of God. Nay ! our optimism is hardly 
credible except to those who will give them- 
selves with all their might to put it into 
action. It is said that '-'- the pure in heart 
shall see God." The law seems to be that 
we can see truth only so far and so fast as 
we seek with single eye to do the things 
that truth requires. 

Our whole argument thus finds its con- 
summation in the deepest facts of human 



140 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

experience, attested daily by living men, 
adding their voices to the eternal chorus of 
the sons of God. Here is plenty of com- 
manding authority, needful always for chil- 
dren and childish minds. The greatest 
truth in the universe is the love of God. 
There are those in increasing numbers — 
who does not know them ? — who answer 
to that love, whose lives have become in 
some measure the channel of its beneficent 
action. More and more as they look out 
on the world through the eyes of their love, 
they find God everywhere. They find him 
in souls like themselves ; they find him in 
the most significant crises of history, under 
the familiar name of '' providence ; " they 
find him in the orderly miracle of nature; 
they find him in daily events, since all things 
are of him and have therefore their use; 
they discover the shining of his light in 
the faces of little children and in many a 
humble deed of courage ; they learn, at last, 
to find him also in the mystery of evil, 
which is ever being transformed into faith. 



RATIONAL OPTIMISM. 141 

hope, and love. With ringing, cheerful 
voices they tell us what they see and know. 
They assure us that whenever they use the 
theistic thought of the world, act in accord 
with it, and apply it to the work of life, it 
succeeds and satisfies, as only truth can 
satisfy. This is to speak with authority. 

The fruits of civilization do not consist 
in factories, machines, wealth, fertile fields, 
splendid cities, — surely not in armies and 
warships. They are to be found in nations 
of men who have learned to live together in 
peace and good will. Civilization itself is 
only another name for the kingdom of God. 
It is the outward form of human society, 
which answers to the conception of the 
one and good God. It corresponds to the 
theology which I have tried briefly to out- 
line. The two fit each other, as a well- 
proportioned and beautiful body fits an 
heroic soul. The one type of excellence 
constitutes a demand for the other. Every 
new approach to the one is an approach to 
the other also. Each new movement of 



142 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

thought toward an adequate theism is a new 
call both to the individual and to mankind 
toward the more complete life which such 
a theism demands. Each new experience 
of the good life, each new venture, trusting 
its principles, is new testimony to the 
reality of the divine philosophy, without 
which such life could have no lasting in- 
spiration. Never did the world call more 
loudly than to-day both for the life and the 
thought that fits and begets this life. It 
is of this that the poets are always singing 
in their visions of a noble and civilized world 
and the men who shall tenant it. 

" They shall build their new romances, new dreams of 

a world to be ; 
Conceive a sublimer outcome than the end of the 

world we see ; 
And their maids shall be pure as morning and their 

youth shall be taught no lie ; 
But all shall be smooth and open to all men beneath 

the sky. 
And the shadow shall pass that we dwell in, till 

under the self-same sun 
The names of the myriad nations are writ in the 

name of one." 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PERSONALITY. 143 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE BEGINNINGS OF PERSONALITY. 

We have so far been considering mainly 
certain great problems about our universe. 
We have sought to see what sort of a world 
it is in which we live. We have taken up 
the problem of the nature of man in inci- 
dental relation to the larger inquiry about 
God. We need now to raise the more inti- 
mate question about the mystery of the per- 
sonality of man. Our thought here will 
follow naturally from all that has preceded. 

Whether we speak of the personality of 
God or of man, in either case our concep- 
tion touches, for better or worse, all that 
makes human life worth living. Men 
instinctively feel this, even before they have 
carefully thought out what they mean by 
the word "person." 



144 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

Who that has the soul of a man would 
choose to take a millionaire's fortune, or the 
highest rank, office, and titles, if, at the same 
time, he had to be '' a nobody," without any 
character ? Who would not rather be poor 
and lowly, provided he might nevertheless 
possess manly character and individuality ? 

There is nothing that constitutes such 
intrinsic evidence of immortality as the fact 
that every man at his best, as if by some 
inner law, holds personality more precious 
than life. When Jesus says that a man 
must lose his life, the life of the body, for 
the sake of finding life, the life of the spirit 
or the person, there is a response in every 
one answering to his words. What explana- 
tion, except that which religion offers, can 
account for this sublime fact? Does it not 
look as if the mighty plan of the universe 
proposed personality as the prize of the toil 
and travail of the ages ? 

Our faith in human nature is essentially 
bound up in this thought. Whether or not 
it is true that '' all men are born free and 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PERSONALITY, 145 

equal " — a tremendous doctrine to accept ! 
— the hope of human progress lies in the 
fact that all men share in the possibilities 
of a common destiny. This destiny lies in 
the direction of the development of person- 
ality. Deny that black men or brown men 
are capable of this sort of development; 
claim that only Caucasians or Anglo-Saxons, 
or a select aristocracy, can ever become per- 
sons; despise the others as beasts of burden, 
kill them as worthless, and it is only a mat- 
ter of time when the logic of this treatment 
will undermine the boasted dignities of the 
elect race or caste. Did any man ever attain 
personality who doubted the divine possibili- 
ties of his brother man ? 

We are accustomed to speak of personality 
as if it were a natural endowment given to 
every child by virtue of his birth into the 
world. The fact is that in the history of 
each life conscious existence begins before 
personality appears. 

Think for a moment of the life of the 
little child. The state of babyhood is the 



146 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

state of the young animal. There is a suc- 
cession of sensations, pains, pleasures, pas- 
sions, desires, like so many colored beads 
strung together on a thread. The only 
unity at first is that made by the string of 
memory upon which the beads are threaded; 
but this is not real or constructive unity. 
There is no freedom in the young child, who 
is moved from within and without by a 
variety of compelling causes, visible and in- 
visible. He uses will, but it is like a blind 
force. It is not free will. 

The infant is essentially and instinctively 
selfish. His aim is to express himself, to 
get, to enjoy. We do not blame him for 
his selfishness — he cannot help it ; it is the 
condition of infantile or physical life. He 
is dimly conscious at times that other beings 
oppose and overrule his desires. But he is 
not at first conscious of doing any wrong in 
asserting himself as against every one else. 

The infant carries no load of regrets for 
past disappointments and failures, or of ap- 
prehensions for future ills. He suffers no 



TEE BEGINNINGS OF PERSONALITY. 147 

pains of a divided will, at war within him- 
self. Neither does he pretend to be any- 
thing else than a child. In his simplicity, 
in his docility, in his capacity for complete 
joy or rest, in the fact that he lives, not in 
the past or in the future, but in the present 
and by the hour, taking things as they come, 
giving himself utterly to the life of the hour, 
— the infant, being a complete child of na- 
ture, is the constant model and parable of 
that higher moral and spiritual state, like- 
wise the outgrowth of nature, to which the 
man is at last destined to come. 

Would it be better if the infant never 
emerged from his infancy ? Is it true that 
childhood is the happiest time in the life of 
man? This would be to call human life a 
failure. Nevertheless there is a long period 
into which infancy imperceptibly passes, 
wherein the charm, tiie ease, the grace, and 
the joyousness of infancy largely disappear. 
It is as necessary a state as infancy. It is 
like the period in plant life that follows the 
beauty of the tender leaf and the blossoming 



148 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

flower. The fruit now has set and it grows, 
but it is small and acid. Let us watch the 
child as he likewise grows. 

The miracle of self-consciousness has now 
come into being. The youth wonderingly 
says : " I am I," or perhaps, " I think, there- 
fore I am." Self-consciousness, in its earlier 
immature development, makes him an ego- 
tist and for a time fills him with the egotist's 
illusions. Do not illusions naturally belong 
in the shadow-land that lies between infancy 
and the heights of intelligent manhood? 
The common illusion of boyhood and youth, 
and of man in the barbarous ages, is the 
sense of the enormous importance of the 
individual. It is a grave question whether 
the circumstances of the well-to-do modern 
home do not too commonly miseducate our 
children in the direction of an exaggerated 
self -consciousness. What is more precious 
than the life of the baby? Is it strange 
that the child, as he grows, long carries with 
him this sense of his own relative magni- 
tude ? It is as if the life, nebulous at first. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PERSONALITY, 149 

had become hardened and concentrated into 
the shape of a separate planet. The little 
planet thinks itself the center of the whole 
solar system. 

There is nothing wrong or alarming in 
the self-conscious, adolescent stage. Ego- 
tism does no harm so far as it is a mere step 
in a process. The youth is learning values, 
and his own values are the first which he 
learns. Meantime, other values appear out 
of perspective. What others do, or get, or 
think, or suffer, or enjoy, seems unimportant 
in that period when the individual makes 
himself the center of the universe. 

Egotism expresses itself in various subtle 
forms, such as vanity, conceit, pride of natu- 
ral endowments, of birth and family, envy 
and jealousy. These phases of life properly 
belong to the period of transition from the 
animal realm. The animals — parrots, dogs, 
and horses — show amusing parodies of 
human egotism. Alas for man, destined for 
higher things, if ever the force and growth 
of the life, failing to develop into manhood, 



150 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

pass over into the sustenance and perpetua- 
tion of these merely childish and animal 
qualities ! To develop the man and to sub- 
due the brute in the man is the problem of 
all education. The nature and conditions 
of the problem are, as yet, hardly under- 
stood. How few youths fairly know what 
it is to attain manhood! How ridiculously 
men and women, well grown in years, remain 
children still, with the toys and petty ambi- 
tions of children, without the child's fresh 
enthusiasm and naive zest! 

Egotism not only appears in the shape of 
pride and conceit; it also shows itself in the 
more delicate forms of morbid self-deprecia- 
tion and false modesty. There is an exag- 
gerated conscientiousness that mourns over 
its own shortcomings rather than over the 
harm that wrong does to others. Who is 
more really an egotist than the moral in- 
valid, always feeling his pulse, complaining 
of his symptoms of ethical distress, or brood- 
ing over men's blame and censure ? Many 
a time actual physical ailments grow out of 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PERSON ALITT. 151 

morbid egotism and its characteristic habits 
of jealousy, envy, and bitterness. 

It is, morever, the egotist's peculiarity to 
insist that his sorrows, sufferings, virtues, 
and even his faults are exceptional. He is 
narrow-sighted and introspective. Let him 
look outward and see the great world of 
mankind. There is the same human nature 
— -enjoying, suffering, sinning, struggling, 
it may be overcoming — in a multitude of 
lives. There is one common clay, or rather 
one divine nature with its unfathomed 
possibilities. 

Another illusion of egotism is that the 
individual is a little creator all by himself. 
He imagines that whatever he does arises 
out of his own power, skill, or wisdom. If 
he does wrong he fancies that he, a tiny Pro- 
metheus, defies the gods. If he is virtuous 
he assumes that he deserves special credit 
for his achievement. Speaking or writing, 
he supposes that he is original. The boy at 
the turning-lathe in his father's shop, using his 
father's timber, tools, and models, watching 



152 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

his father's motions, taught by his words, 
applying the power of the great water-wheel 
or dynamo, fancies that he makes things out 
of his own head, with his own skill, with 
power of his own ! 

The egotist thinks himself perfectly free. 
The more shallow he is, the more stoutly he 
claims to possess the liberty of choice in 
every act. Whatever he does, he thinks 
that he might with equal ease have done the 
opposite. He likes, indeed, to regard him- 
self as a sort of automobile. The name 
of the automobile would indicate that the 
machine moves itself. One might imagine 
it boasting over the horse and carriage, or 
over the railroad train, drawn by a loco- 
motive. But the automobile, as every one 
knows, has no free motion whatever. It 
depends absolutely upon a store of power 
drawn from the central source. It is con- 
trolled by rigid conditions. 

Notice another curious illusion brought 
over from babyhood. It is that man's chief 
end is to get things for himself. The sel- 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PERSONALITY, 153 

fishness of the child is the instinct of the 
animal. Even in the animal world this 
instinct involves struggle with other creat- 
ures. In the realm of human life selfish- 
ness, or the animal law, straightway brings 
inward strife. The truth is, self-conscious- 
ness involves at first a twofold life. There 
seems to be a lower self — the earlier, animal 
life which filled babyhood — and a higher or 
inner self, subtle, mysterious, authoritative. 
Often there seem not two voices only, but 
various selves, as if different sides and 
aspects of the nature were each striving for 
the mastery of the life. The strange inner 
self seems at times to disappear from sight, 
but lo ! as one watches, it comes again, like 
a still, small voice rising out of the discord 
of each inward conflict. It observes, it 
passes judgment, it lays down laws, it urges 
and commands, it seems sometimes to pity, 
or again kindly to smile, as if with good- 
humored patience, at the youth's awkward 
attempts to play the part of a man. If the 
chief end of the baby or animal is to get for 



154 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

himself, what means the appearance in man, 
at the threshold of his career, of this new 
invisible self, interposing a veto, more or 
less audible, upon every movement of sel- 
fishness ? Is not this the real man, the per- 
son who is destined to be ? 

We see now no longer merely a stream of 
sensations blindly following one another. 
The materials of consciousness are arraying 
themselves constructively into the lines of 
habits, good or bad, and under the forms of 
principles. Moments of pain, or pleasure, 
of appetite, desire, or aspiration fall into their 
proper place in classes ; some are marked 
good, others bad. Some belong to the animal 
man ; others do the behests of the higher self. 
Elemental passions seem to rise in the man 
and to sway his life, as if he were a log 
caught by the waves. Or again, music 
sounds in his ears, and visions appear before 
him, letting him into the secrets of another 
and holier realm. Strange, mighty, oppos- 
ing forces seem to be struggling for the 
possession of his soul. This is " the storm 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PERSONALITY. 155 

and stress " period of life. Paul knew about 
it when speaking from the depths of his 
heart he cried out, '' For that which I do I 
allow not; for what I would, that do I not; 
but what I hate, that do I." Who has never 
had moments that correspond to this remark- 
able confession? 

We are sometimes tempted to complain at 
the fact of self-consciousness and to wish 
that it had never arisen ? It surely does not 
at once bring happiness, rest, or peace. It 
interferes with man's efficiency. It stops a 
man on the verge of action, and makes him 
think what he is doing. He is not so able 
an animal for this wonderful human gift of 
self-consciousness. The longer the period of 
egotism, pride, self-will, and selfishness lasts, 
the worse he is as a man. 

There are no greater ills in human life than 
those traceable to pride, conceit, egotism, 
that is, the illusion about the individual's 
exceptional importance, and selfishness, or 
the illusion that every man must look out for 
himself first and always. Hence come hate, 



156 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

quarrels, fighting, wars, envies, jealousies 
among men and nations. Hence come all 
manner of inward unrest, bitterness, unhap- 
piness, doubt, and fear. All tragedies are 
here, devastating the lives of generations. 
Multitudes live their lives in this state of 
divided self-consciousness, of inward strug- 
gle, and egotism. Is such life worth living ? 

But wait. See what all this costly disci- 
pline is bringing to man. It is lifting him 
in the path of spiritual evolution. It is the 
glory of man that selfishness hurts him. It 
is his glory that the lower stages of his life do 
not constitute personality. The nearer he 
grows to manhood, the greater the inner un- 
rest in reconciling the claims of the egotist 
to gain and to get for himself, with his dawn- 
ing ideals as a man, the child of the Spirit, 

Surely the man who is still at strife within 
himself, who has not yet ''found himself," 
torn with confiicting motives, cannot be 
called a person. See how many things, 
which a person should be able to do, this 
half-grown man is unable to accomplish! 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PERSONALITY, 157 

He does not yet know how to keep a good 
and serene temper even with his own chil- 
dren, neighbors, and customers; he has not 
risen above petty jealousies ; his constancy 
and loyalty cannot be depended upon by his 
friends ; he is kindly and rude, generous and 
mean, by fits and starts ; he does not under- 
stand his own selfishness, which he thinks 
ought to have a certain measure of indul- 
gence ; he does not know how to handle mis- 
chance and disappointment, and is apt to be 
bowled over at the touch of evil ; there are 
all manner of life-experiences which he can- 
not assimilate or make sense of; he has not 
got the secret of peace, happiness, or rest- 
fulness ; the universe is not yet his home ; 
it is not at all certain, as he takes his place 
in the world, that he is a man who will leave 
it bettered and enriched. What helpless and 
insufficient men even a university education 
often sends adrift upon the world ! Whereas, 
the university ought to train men to be citi- 
zens of the universe, obedient to its mighty 
laws, free, and at ease everywhere within it. 



158 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

Men thought in the ages of barbarism 
that when the body had matured the man 
was therefore full grown. They imagined 
that maturity came with the twenty-first 
year. Maturity is ripeness, self-control, 
sweetness, freedom, joy, and above all, in- 
ward unity. 

But what will you say, some one asks, of 
such tremendous characters as Caesar or 
Napoleon? Arrogant and self -centered as 
they were, were they not persons ? Here 
are men with great qualities, with a species 
of unity and consistency. Their lives are 
surely more than a thread of beads ; they 
make a story of a certain kind of progress 
and growth. There is, indeed, we answer, 
superb material in our Caesars and Napole- 
ons ; there is a certain structure ; but it is 
not permanent structure. It carries the ele- 
ments of its own dissolution. There is no 
solid foundation, or stable equilibrium in any 
form of egotism and selfishness. Rugged 
as it may seem for a while, the facts and 
the laws of the universe are against it. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PEBSONALITY, 159 

Nay! if such were the type of personality 
for the attaining of which human life were 
destined — the type of the lion or the bird 
of prey — the word "person" could have no 
significance. The Napoleons derive their 
interest and importance by virtue of the 
contrast with the spiritual ideal which they 
so strongly emphasize. The bitter or worm- 
eaten apple is known as such by reason of 
the good and ripe fruit. 

I have said that personality has not yet 
come to its own in the intermediate period 
of self-conscious struggle, of dualism, of 
stress and storm. This is the message of 
clear encouragement and promise. It means 
that the race is mainly in the stage of its 
unripe youth, while its abundant and tumul- 
tuous life, even its unrest, is an earnest of 
fuller life about to come. This is why joy 
and peace, despite all our material advance- 
meut, do not yet abound. The world has 
not attained the inward conditions of mature 
life. There is a divine pressure and urgency 
upon us to be mature men, and not children, 



160 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

to be civilized indeed, and not gilded and 
sumptuous barbarians. 

So much for the second and adolescent 
stage in the growth of man toward his right- 
ful personality. It would be intolerable if 
it were the final stage of human growth. It 
is full of hope if it is only a phase in the 
long and glorious secular movement guided 
by God. It is indeed a stage in man's inner 
life closely resembling his early conception 
of the outward world. Men thought the 
world a battleground of titanic forces of 
evil and good. So men think of their own 
souls as such a battleground. There is no 
satisfying unity in either conception. 

The period of true personality is still 
before mankind. It is a new age. Its first 
fruits only have appeared. It is that to 
which all the pain and unrest of the world 
point as their goal. 



WHAT PERSONALITY 18, 161 



CHAPTER IX. 

WHAT PERSONALITY IS. 

I HAVE shown that personality is not 
achieved in the period of mere adolescence. 
Men are not persons, that is, grown men, 
while they still cherish the conceits, the 
illusions, the egotism, and selfishness of 
childish and barbarous times. The way is 
now clear to seek wherein true personality 
consists, worthy for man to look forward to, 
grand enough to justify the costly labors 
of the centuries. 

Do we believe in the personality of God ? 
Yes and no. If personality means a limit 
or a form of restriction, if a personal God 
is, as children fancy, a somewhat magnified 
image of a man, in some place up in the 
sky, to be seen in another life as he cannot 
be seen here, — no modern man can believe 



162 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

that God is a person. We do not even be- 
lieve in man's personality in any such mere 
material shape. It is not the body that 
constitutes our friend a person. Personality 
is not the kind of fact that can be altered by 
cutting off all the limbs of the body, or by 
putting on the white hair of old age. It is 
a reality of the realm of the spirit. We 
cannot see or touch the person by means of 
the senses, as we cannot see or touch the 
atoms that constitute matter. 

In what sense, then, may we affirm that 
God is a person, or if you please the Person 
of the universe ? This most real sense lies 
deeper than the objections of our scepticism. 

Let us begin with an easy illustration. 
What is it that constitutes the body of a 
man? Is it a certain weight of earthy 
elements ? Is it a certain shape ? No ! It 
is an informing life that builds the earthy 
elements together into the proportions, 
figure, and features of a man. Without this 
informing and most mysterious vital force, 
the man could not be. The body is the 



WHAT PERSONALITY IS. 163 

form through which the life shines. Let us 
use this parable in helping us to see what 
we mean by saying that God is person. We 
mean that there is an informing Life in and 
behind the changing forms of the world, 
building up, shining through, expressing it- 
self. Let us complete our statement of the 
nature of this indwelling Life. When we 
say that God is person, we mean that there is 
infinite Good Will, using almighty power, by 
all the methods of intelligence, for the highest 
welfare of all beings. Here is the thought 
of a person to reverence, to love, to obey, to 
be glad in forever. In this sense, sublime 
and transcendent as it seems, personality 
is nothing vague or abstract. It is near 
and immanent, reaching every life. Good 
Will cannot be unconscious ; it is conscious- 
ness at its highest power. Justice, truth, 
faithfulness, right, are the eternal and uni- 
versal forms through which Good Will acts. 
Whatever words or names we use, He or It^ 
Grod^ the Father^ the reality is greater than 
our words ; they are only symbols. The 



164 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

Person is that which loves and can therefore 
be loved. It is not only that with which 
we can come into communion, but it is that 
fountain of life out of which our own per- 
sonality proceeds and grows, and without 
which as the source our existence, lacking 
spiritual reality, would resolve itself into 
a series of meaningless dreams. In this 
thought of personality there is perfect unity. 
In the eyes of Good Will all things work 
together for good. There is also joy, free- 
dom, satisfaction, worthy of an infinite intel- 
ligence. 

We have seen in a previous chapter that if 
we leave God, that is, the ruling Good Will, 
out of the universe, there remains no sense, 
order, or unity. Personality, then, is an- 
other necessary name by which we make 
the fact of God real to our minds. Could 
there be anything real if the Life that is in 
and through all things were not loving, 
personal life ? What a marvelous thing 
it is that man's mind should conceive of 
such divine personality ! Could we so 



WHAT PERSONALITY IS. 165 

conceive unless the conception were born 
of reality ? 

If now we have a correct thought of what 
God is as Person, or the Person of all per- 
sons, we know what sort of personality man, 
the child of God, is destined to attain. The 
personality of man is like the personality of 
God. This is the deepest interpretation of 
the old word that '' Man was made in his 
likeness." If man thinks of God in anthro- 
pomorphic terms, that is, as being in some 
true sense like man, it is because, first of all, 
man has the capacity to grow into the form 
of God. How could man think the majestic 
thoughts of God after him, if his nature 
were not akin to the nature of God ? 

Define now what a true human person 
must be. It must be Good Will incarnate in 
the man, using all forces at his command, 
through all the channels of his intelligence, 
for the welfare of all beings whom he 
touches. There is force, wisdom, will, love, 
as in God, moving toward the one purpose 
of the universe, that is, beneficence. There 



166 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

is justice, truth, faithfulness, right, — the 
universal forms which Good Will always 
takes. Show us a man in whom the eternal 
love is thus incarnate, and you have shown 
us a person to be loved, reverenced, and 
trusted, with whom we instinctively delight 
to commune and cooperate. 

Have there ever been such persons on 
earth? Every one admits that there has 
surely been one such person. It makes no 
difference what theory one holds about 
Jesus, whether he is called divine or human, 
whether he presents a flawless and absolute 
instance of actual personality or a very 
close, conspicuous, and remarkable approach 
to this ideal. In either case we have the 
object lesson that we seek. I only insist 
that this object lesson is the type and repre- 
sentative of a real spiritual order. It is 
nothing exceptional, but it is universal ; in 
other words it marks the heights to which 
the education of man progresses. The uni- 
verse marches toward the production of the 
kind of personality for which Jesus stands. 



WHAT PERSONALITY IS, 167 

I said that in a real and mature human 
person we see Good Will making use of all 
the man's resources, through all the chan- 
nels of orderly intelligence, for the welfare 
of all beings whom the man's effort can reach. 
Is not this the characteristic description of 
Jesus' life ? It is not that he had a beauti- 
ful figure or face ; it is not that he pos- 
sessed any natural outward grace and charm. 
It is conceivable that his features were plain 
and rugged; it is not at all certain that a 
beholder would have known his greatness. 
The generations who have honored his 
memory have never been able to tell how he 
looked. The power that wins men is the 
universal power of love, utterly swaying a 
man to its ends, shining in the plainest 
face, filling him with energy, surcharging 
his intelligence with light. 

We suppose that Jesus passed his appren- 
ticeship in the school of self-consciousness. 
He felt within himself the struggle of the 
vague transition time between the age of 
the child and the age of the man. What 



168 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

does that strange story of ''the tempta- 
tion in the desert " mean, except that Jesus 
faced the phantoms of egotism, pride, and 
selfishness, and heard the siren voices which 
urge a man to get and enjoy for himself? 
Yes, he stood, as other men are wont to 
stand, at the point where the universe ap- 
pears to revolve around the planet of the 
little life. 

What we know is that Jesus emerged out 
of the secondary and transitional period of 
a human life, in which most men are still 
content to remain, into the higher and per- 
manent stage of mature manhood. There 
is no longer any divided will; there is no 
inward contest ; there are no '' split person- 
alities," or separate aspects of a man's life, 
claiming to be independent of each other. 
There is no time when Jesus ceases to be a 
man of faith and love, and straightway begins 
to become a mercenary man, an ambitious 
man, least of all a man of appetite and pas- 
sion. He never ceases to be a friendly man 
in order for a few days to try the experiment 



WHAT PERSONALITY IS. 169 

of being an enemy. The life coheres and 
goes together ; it is a unity ; good will dom- 
inates and guides it; good will commands 
every member of the body and every faculty 
of the mind. Under this headship the 
powers work at their best, as if under their 
natural lord. As the informing life consti- 
tutes the tree, drawing through every root- 
let, tingling in every twig, shaping the 
flowers after their own kind toward the time 
of the fruitage, so the eternal life, in its 
highest manifestation, wells up in the soul 
of this mature man, revealing at the same 
moment what God is, and what man may 
become. 

Is man, then, no more than a tree? The 
tree has only a little of the life of God in 
itself; its life lies below the range of con- 
sciousness or personality. The man has the 
marvelous dower of consciousness ; memory 
is but one of its forms. The man knows, 
and knows that he knows ; he enjoys, and 
that he may enjoy more highly he also 
suffers. Best of all, he loves and he knows 



170 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

that he loves; his soul thrills with ecstasy 
in response to the touch of the mighty Good 
Will. He desires as God desires ; he wills 
as God wills — nothing but good. So will- 
ing, desiring, loving, his soul is content. 
He has found himself in God. 

In Jesus' case there is nothing that he is 
conscious of doing of his own motion. His 
thoughts, his plans, his ruling purposes are 
given him ; he has no '' original thought ; " 
he dares to do nothing of himself. His 
love is not his own ; it flows from the per- 
ennial fountains of being. And yet his 
personality is fullest in those moments 
when he yields himself completely to the 
almighty motion of goodness. Then he has 
ease, freedom, gladness, plentiful life. He 
is most truly himself when he knows that 
all is of God. 

One of Jesus' great teachings was that no 
person need ever be anxious. What is the 
fruitful source of anxiety and worriment? 
It is the egotist's fear and suspicion ; his 
business is his own separate interest, against 



WHAT PERSONALITY IS. 171 

which he conceives others to plot and con- 
tend. In Jesus' case his life was not his 
own ; he lived under orders ; he did his 
Father's business ; the victorious forces of 
the universe went with him. He had only to 
obey orders from above. There was nothing 
therefore to be anxious and worried about. 

" What of the field's fortune? 
That concerned our leader ! 
Led, we struck our stroke, 
Nor cared for doings, left or right." 

Every good servant, every soldier, every 
right-minded man learns to take this atti- 
tude. It is the attitude in which the mind 
gives itself up to a task, a duty, a ser- 
vice, not its own but imposed upon it from 
above, and dismisses anxiety. All life, so 
Jesus taught, belongs to this order of ser- 
vice. It is as if the person had enlisted 
once for all in an eternal campaign. All 
that he needs will now be furnished him ; 
he has no care except to obey. The cause 
is God's ; the service is for humanity. 



172 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

See another remarkable fact. In the in- 
termediate period of self-conscious struggle 
no man makes any sense or unity out of 
the checkered experiences of his own life. 
What harmony is there between success 
and reverses, pleasure and pain, love and 
enmity, the death of the body and the life 
of the soul? Many a man believes in the 
outward universe and resolves tornadoes 
and sun-spots into an outward harmony, 
while his own inner life is a chaos, and 
discordant voices are daily raised out of 
his own bewildered consciousness. It is 
the beauty of Jesus' life that all the material 
of experience that flows into it is taken up, 
used, assimilated, and wrought over into 
harmony and unity. The scenes of the 
hard peasant life, the mother's songs over 
her child, the pictures drawn from the 
shop, the synagogue, the wilderness, and the 
stormy lake, every childish disappointment, 
words of love and friendship, the hospitable 
home at Bethany, the harsh taunting voices 
of the Pharisees, the Roman soldiers on the 



WHAT PERSONALITY IS. 173 

march, the teachings and the fate of John 
the Baptist, the shallow faith of his chosen 
disciples, the betrayal, the scene in Pilate's 
hall, the crucifixion, — what detail or inci- 
dent can you leave out? What is there 
that the serene, buoyant, guiding good will, 
welling up through every experience, does 
not translate into the terms of a noble and 
unified life ? What discord is there that 
•fails to be resolved into the higher harmony? 
Here is the test of personality: that the 
whole life of man becomes a unity, like 
the life of God. The outward universe is 
simply a parable of this sublime truth. As 
in the thought of God there is no struggle 
or antagonism, so in the view of the grown 
man, God's child, all is well. 

How do you know, some one insists, that 
Jesus, grand as he was, attained all that 
you have described? It is quite unimpor- 
tant whether we are speaking of the ideal 
Christ of our imagination — the most per- 
fect man whom we can conceive — or of the 
actual and historical Jesus of Nazareth. It 



174 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

is enough that the actual Jesus at every 
point suggests all that we mean, that in 
every respect his life solidly illustrates 
what the most noble human personality is. 
He surely gave his life with one master 
purpose to the sway of beneficence. No 
evil, outward or within, ever defeated the 
splendid upward movement of his life. The 
point to which I have been coming is that 
Jesus' life is the typical and familiar histori- 
cal object lesson of a new and higher order 
of human personality. It marks the third 
and higher stage into which human life is 
bound to emerge out of the intermediate 
adolescent period of morbid, restless, strug- 
gling self-consciousness. It guarantees the 
promise of a happier period for the indi- 
vidual and for the race. 

But Jesus' life, whether treated as his- 
torical or ideal, would be no object lesson 
at all if after long waiting we could see no 
other stars in our sky. The beauty of our 
proposition is that the order of personality, 
to which Jesus has given the characterizing 



WHAT PEBSONALITY IS, 175 

title, has often appeared within our human 
horizon; it constitutes a growing proces- 
sion of suns and stars. Take a single 
instance that shines out of the blackest 
period of mediaeval Italian history. I refer 
to Francis of Assisi. Here is the same type 
of personality that Jesus exhibited. Here 
is unbounded good will, flowing, as it were, 
out of the heart of God, possessing the soul 
of a man of whom we should not otherwise 
have heard a whisper, using all his latent 
powers, raising him to the heights of elo- 
quence, winning for him mighty persuasive- 
ness over the minds of thousands, stirring 
them, at least for a time, to purity, righteous- 
ness, humanity, and a new faith in God. 
Francis was not his own master ; he was the 
voice, the messenger, the servant, say, rather, 
the child of God. Hence the noble, free, 
and joyous personality; he was the man in 
all Italy who feared nothing, whom no mis- 
fortune could harm, who walked amidst 
the din of those warlike times as the free- 
born citizen of the universe. 



176 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

Take an entirely different kind of pei*son. 
Why is it that men never tire of hearing 
about Washington? Why did he make such 
an overmastering impression upon his con- 
temporaries, both at home and abroad ? The 
secret is that here again is an instance of 
a grown man, a mature personahty. He 
is not what we call the pious or spiritual 
man; he is so little religious, in the con- 
ventional sense, that men hardly care to 
ask to what church he belonged. He falls 
into the class of "the men of action," 
with Marcus Aurelius, William the Silent, 
and Cromwell. But see how w^ell he meets 
our test of personality. Here is good will 
in a superb body, using grand human 
powers, with active intelligence, under the 
universal forms of righteousness and truth, 
for the welfare not only of his own people, 
but also of mankind. There is no divided 
will; there is no sign of discord; there is 
no effort to get for himself praise, place, 
or emoluments. The divine goodness simply 
uses this man, and he chooses to be used. 



WHAT PERSONALITY IS. 177 

With what an infinite abandon he yields 
himself to meet risks, losses, death ! All 
the events of his life, under the one great 
motive power, swing into unison. Defeats, 
disappointments, obstacles, the wintry nights 
at Valley Forge, all the painful discords are 
resolved at last into the harmony of serene 
personality. 

What I have wished to show is that cases 
like Jesus, Paul, St. Francis, Wycliffe, 
Luther, Cromwell, Washington — one might 
cite a great list of such names — mark the 
natural trend of the movement of man's 
spiritual growth. Under a certain form of 
pressure, with a healthy moral environment, 
with a true and normal education, all lives 
tend to move in this direction. The type of 
life of which we have spoken is a higher 
type, in every particular that characterizes 
real manhood and womanhood. It is as far 
above ordinary, struggling, self-conscious, 
selfish, anxious, jealous, juvenile life as 
boyishness and youth are above unconscious 
and innocent babyhood. It represents ma- 



178 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

turity of manhood, not only in the body 
and form, not merely in the development 
of the intellect, but in the moral and 
spiritual qualities that most closely ally 
man with God. 



THE COST OF FEBSONALITY. 179 



CHAPTER X. 

THE COST OF PERSONALITY. 

Why do common men and women credit 
the grand stories of the heroes and masters ? 
How is it that they easily understand these 
stories? Why are men so ready to admit 
that there is a range of personality quite 
above that which they ordinarily enjoy 
themselves? Is it because we have seen 
certain real persons, and felt the magnetism 
of their presence? Yes. But we know more 
than this. There have been moments of our 
lives when we have risen for the time to 
the heights of our own personality. Who 
in this age is so ignorant as not to have 
experienced the golden hours when at the 
call of a human need, at the bidding of 
friendship, at the command of duty, at the 
voice of truth, at the dawning of love In 



180 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

our hearts, we have wholly trusted the 
divine motion and let ourselves go? When 
have we known inner peace, rest, gladness, 
insight, and the quickening of our intelli- 
gence in such a supreme way, as in these 
hours Avhen 'Hhe Power, not ourselves, 
which makes for Righteousness," possessed 
us utterly ? Then we lived as God lives ; 
then we were persons as God is ; then we 
were happy though not seeking happiness, 
and free, though bound by a glorious inner 
necessity ; then all things that happened to 
us seemed well. And this Power swaying 
us was the love of God, ever present, attend- 
ing our lives. 

We have known men whom the world 
thought hard, selfish, arrogant (and the 
world was right in its surmise about them), 
lifted on the tide of sympathy, humanity, 
patriotism, till we bowed before the majesty 
of the true personality :ftftfealed in them. 
Why should any man, thus having caught a 
vision of his ripened manhood, relapse again 
into the life of the child or the savage — 



THE COST OF PERSONALITY. 181 

narrow, prejudiced, grasping, apprehensive, 
constrained, restless? It is because men 
are accustomed to assume that life, on its 
lower ranges, is the only life there is in this 
world. They think that when the body is 
grown the man is grown ; that personality 
is consistent with self-consciousness, fear, 
struggle, selfishness. 

The truth is that personality is a new and 
higher range of human life, to be had and 
enjoyed here and now. Surely the hours 
when we are at our best are the earnest of 
the life which all mature men and women 
should lead, who else are not worthy to be 
called grown men and women. 

I shall assume now that any intelligent 
man would like to live continuously the life 
of a person. Is it possible that any one 
wishes to stay in the region of self-conscious- 
ness, jealousy, struggle, unrest, anxiety, and 
a divided will ? Let us reckon what it will 
cost us to be persons all the time. What 
must we venture ? Must we sacrifice any- 
thing that is precious ? We must sacrifice 



182 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

the old illusions of our childishness ; that 
is all. 

It was an illusion that the individual is 
the center of the universe. Let us simply- 
let our little lives go, obedient to the master 
law of gravitation. In our houi^ of love, 
generosity, chivalry, we do this ; we forget 
ourselves altogether ; we go with the motion 
of the stars. Why should we ever try to 
resist the beautiful motion ? The law is 
eternal good will. Why should we not bow 
to the law, and make it our own ? 

It was an illusion that the self is a little 
creator. Let us tell the truth. No soul of 
us can think anything except so far as " we 
think the thoughts of God after him." To 
think otherwise must be to think falsely. 
We can do nothing except in so far as we 
each apply the forces of God. Let the child 
at the father's lathe rejoice in the wonderful 
power, in the cunning tools, in the beautiful 
models ; let him help do the father's work, 
and be the more glad ; let him own, as all 
the great doers and thinkers have done, that 



THE COST OF PERSONALITY, 183 

he " can do nothing of himself." Who in the 
time of his greatest efficiency is not forced 
to own this ? We draw then on the infinite 
treasures — power, beauty, music, goodness, 
love. Yes, when we work for high ends, 
as Paul worked, as Florence Nightingale 
worked, as Abraham Lincoln worked, the 
infinite resources are ours. There is, indeed, 
many a remarkable testimony to this effect 
from the men of highest genius. They have 
written poems and stories as if they were 
only amanuenses, writing at the dictation of 
another; they have spoken as if they were 
for the time being inspired; they have 
invented as if the bright thoughts merely 
" came to them." 

It was an illusion that the human will is 
independent of God. Independent of the 
ruling Good Will ? Willing what God does 
not bid? This would be ill will, childish 
and futile. What do I will at my best, and 
when I see clearly ? I will what is good — 
justice, mercy, the happiness and welfare 
of all. Nothing else or less is intelligent. 



184 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

Why do I so will that which is good and 
beautiful? Not surely because I first con- 
ceived it, but because God so moved me to 
Avill. My good will is his will. My ill will 
is the lack or absence of his will ; it is so 
much power misdirected. Let us tell the 
truth, that our wills, as Tennyson said, are 
ours to make them his. Were we ever at 
rest except at such times as we let the Good 
Will carry us upon our way ? 

It was an illusion that we are here in this 
wonderful universe to get and to absorb 
each for himself. Children may think so; 
savages may think so. But that cannot 
long be the law of the child which is not the 
law of the father. And what is tlie law of 
the father ? The eternal law of the uni- 
verse is to give, to share, to do, to achieve, 
to express his beneficence. This is our law 
therefore. Own it, try it, trust it. 

But must we not get — get money, food, 
education, leisure, position, honor? What 
if Jesus, Francis of Assisi, Wycliffe, Wes- 
ley, Washington, had said this ? Their lives 



THE COST OF PERSONALITY, 185 

would have come to nought. Their memo- 
ries would have been written in the sands. 
They sought first to give, to achieve, to 
carry light, and lo ! the eternal miracle was 
enacted ; all things, houses and lands and 
friends, whatever they needed wherewith 
to do the Master's will, were ready at hand. 
Giving all, they got whatever they needed 
to give. Let the heart pour out all the life- 
blood it has. Pouring it out, the heart is 
fed in the process. 

I may make my meaning clearer by mark- 
ing the contrast between the child's idea 
and the grown man's idea of the chief end 
of life. The child desires happiness first of 
all. The childish or half-grown man like- 
wise desires happiness, and thinks it consists 
in what he can get, — in food and comforts, 
in pay, reward, fees, emoluments, in recog- 
nition, praise, and fame. The grown man, 
the person, wants something infinitely richer 
than happiness, as it is commonly under- 
stood. He wants satisfaction. Every part 
of his nature craves satisfaction: his body 



186 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

craves it, as when he was a child ; but, 
most of all, his spirit craves satisfaction. 
And what is this satisfaction that a man 
wants ? It is essentially that the man may 
feel the divine life throbbing in him and fill- 
ing him ; it is that he may express in and 
through himself the divine nature ; it is 
especially that he may express good will. 
To carry the life of good will in every 
nerve is the fulfilment of his being. If he 
has skill, he is here to carry the power of 
God by his work ; if he has gifts of beauty 
or song, he is here to carry God's beauty in 
the forms of art; if he has intellect and 
training, he is here to carry God's thought 
and wisdom ; if he has love, he is here to 
spread love through his friendliness. In 
whatever ways possible, his necessity, his 
joy, the law of his life is to express whatever 
God gives him. 

Pleasure, comfort, pay, praise, are now no 
longer sought as ends ; they are not the chief 
object of life, but its incidents and means. 
They were the object of life before the man 



THE COST OF PESONALITY. 187 

had found himself, when he was only a 
boy. Why should the man who knows 
reality trouble himself about ribbons, deco- 
rations, and baubles ? True, human thanks, 
love, and trust are sweet ; it is gratifying if 
one's services are wished for. But all these 
things, in the case of the grown man, are 
secondary and purely incidental. Shall 
Browning, Emerson, William of Orange, 
Beethoven, and Michael Angelo work for 
hire or depend on the applause of the 
streets? Let a man who is a man do his 
work as well as he can, and leave the result 
with God. 

This is the condition of the highest qual- 
ity of work. Selfishness or egotism inter- 
feres with its quality. Egotism divides the 
man's powers in the attempt to realize differ- 
ent and incompatible objects ; it introduces 
a vain load of apprehensions and jealousies 
that drag upon genius. The noblest work 
is the freest of self-consciousness, as it is 
also the fullest in active, intelligent, sym- 
pathetic consciousness. The quaint author 



188 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

of the Theologia Grermanica expresses it well : 
"As the man's hand is to the man," so is 
the man himself to the divine intelligence. 
The man is at his best when, heart and mind 
and will, he is simply seeking to do the 
bidding of the Eternal Goodness. He is at 
his best physically and intellectually, and as 
a moral and spiritual being. So beautiful is 
the law of cost, when applied to the attain- 
ment of personality. 

Two facts are thus seen to be true about 
life : On the one hand all life is costly 
in effort; it cannot be had without cost. 
On the other hand this yqtj effort, involv- 
ing, as it does, power, intelligence, and 
good will, and therefore being an expres- 
sion of the divine nature, brings with it 
joy and satisfaction, and, in fact, consti- 
tutes life. If any labor is dull, unsatis- 
factory, and repulsive, this is because the 
whole man — the person — is not present 
in the doing of it. Power may be in it, 
without intelligence, or if intelligence is also 
there, the work even then may be unwillingly 



THE COST OF FEBSONALITY. 189 

rendered. But work wherein the person 
wholly expresses himself is joyous work. 
Even the child early catches the idea of such 
work. When is he so happy as when he is 
expressing his strength, his skill, his sense 
of beauty, or his love ? So when the whole 
man is present in his work even pain is 
absorbed in the joy of achievement. Does 
not the cost of the mother's love prove 
this? 

All sorts of facts from experience bear out 
what we have said. Who have been happier 
than those men and women who have given 
up the child's illusion that they are here for 
pay, or praise, and have accepted the grown 
man's truth that they are here to give, to 
share, to accomplish whatever the universal 
Good Will commands ? This is to be '' co- 
workers with God." What is there to lose 
or to fear, in going over, body and soul, to 
the truth? 

Happiness and utility and righteousness, 
each in its highest sense, are here one. The 
highest happiness is that which includes all 



190 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

lives in its wide sympathies. The most 
complete utility is that which embraces 
moral and spiritual as well as economical 
and physical welfare. Righteousness is 
simply the process of the eternal Good Will, 
whether in God or man, seeking its benef- 
icent ends by the most direct and universal 
highways. 

A question may occur at this point 
whether there may not be some sacrifice of 
variety and individuality in the conception 
of personality that is here presented. Will 
not good will, possessing men, reduce them 
to an uninteresting and monotonous level of 
similarity ? Trust the marvelous Nature to 
answer this question. When were variety, 
individuality, and keenness of interest ever 
spoiled by fullness of life ? Good will is the 
same in the higher life of man as physical 
health is in his body. Surcharge a family, 
or a people if you can, with the life-blood 
of health, and you have no fear that the 
individuals will all act and look alike. Let 
all grow tall and large and strong, eliminate 



THE COST OF PERSONALITY. 191 

disease with the puny variations that it pro- 
duces, and what type of human beauty 
will suffer loss ? Develop likewise the mind 
of a people to its utmost power, as the 
Athenian mind was developed in the age of 
Pericles, and you have what is known as 
'' originality " in all its varieties of thought- 
fulness, wit, humor, and art; you cannot 
have this fruitful originality in a brutalized 
or ignorant population. But there is no 
such development of the native and unused 
faculties, on which all individuality depends, 
as that which comes about under the pressure 
of unselfish love, public spirit, or the sense 
of the companionship of God. The bril- 
liancy of the Athenian Commonwealth was 
only the earnest of the possibilities of the 
coming "republic of God." 

We have in a simple and rational form 
a grand spiritual reality which men have 
groped after for ages ; only the few, so far, 
have found it. Oriental sages with vigils 
and fastings sought often in vain a secret 
of wisdom and peace. Buddha vaguely 



192 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

shadowed forth, under the mystical name of 
Nirvana, the release of man's spirit from the 
bondage of the flesh. Good Quakers caught 
the idea of a life lived in communion with 
the eternal. Wesley and the Methodists 
called this " personal " religion, and taught 
men that they could never be '' saved " till 
they had ''experienced" it, each for himself. 
Schopenhauer strangely attempted to reach 
philosophic calm and contentment by a flank 
movement of negative or pessimistic thought. 
Thousands of votaries of " Christian Science " 
to-day approach the same end by seeking 
altogether to ignore certain of the natural 
conditions of finite life. What innumerable 
forms have there been, — often gloomy, aus- 
tere, or fantastic, — through which men have 
sought salvation from the dreary middle 
region of self-consciousness, pride, a divided 
will, and the chronic pains of selfishness ! 
Under these various forms men were feeling 
their way to a very clear and beautiful inter- 
pretation of the meaning of the turmoil and 
struggle of human existence. 



THE COST OF PERSONALITY, 193 

There is a way of escape and release from 
the wretchedness of self-consciousness and 
the wearying pains of egotism. There is a 
'^ peace that passeth understanding;" the 
struggling will becomes God's will, and is 
at rest. There is a conscious joy, like the 
joy of God, into which the self-consciousness 
is absorbed. There is a range of human ex- 
istence, here and now, in which God and man 
meet and are one. What mysterious Nir- 
vana, or what fancied heaven, is so sweet 
as daily existence becomes in God's world, 
where we now are ? As the little planet is 
held in its orderly course, swinging in space, 
so we see that our lives, moved by God's 
love, bound by the infinite gravitation of his 
beneficent will, are forever safe in his keep- 
ing. Let him use our souls as he will for 
love's sake. This is all that we ask ; it is life 
to do the bidding of the Eternal Goodness. 

What wonder if the body oft-times feels 
the touch of this higher life, and the 
abounding health of the spirit revives the 
empty springs of the physical nature ! Man 



194 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

is one, and the whole being, body and soul, 
is at its best when the man rises to his 
stature and takes his place in the universe 
as a son of God. 

We are told that man's childhood is pro- 
longed as he becomes more highly devel- 
oped. Processes that once filled the entire 
life of the remote progenitors from which he 
is derived are now crowded into the length- 
ened period of infancy. Something like 
this is true of man's intellectual and spir- 
itual experiences. The youth of a modern 
generation may live through changes, feel- 
ings, aspirations, marvelous thoughts and 
activities, such as savage man never knew. 
What the seer of ancient time reached at 
the end of a lifetime may become at last by 
'' mystic generation " the common inheri- 
tance, taught in our schools, practised by 
multitudes. 

The secret of personality is the grandest 
lesson to be learned from the ancient times. 
Glozed over and hidden away by ages of 
priestcraft and superstition, it comes to us 



THE COST OF PERSONALITY, 195 

in a new light as an opening century dawns. 
Illustrious names, a multitude of splendid 
experiences, the witness of men of different 
types of mind, a golden thread of precious 
history, vast social needs, the illustrations of 
a new science, — all concentrate to-day to 
develop in mankind a fresh urgency toward 
a higher stage of freedom, happiness, and effi- 
ciency. What the man of old times, after 
weary years, died without understanding, 
any youth can now try, taste, and know for 
himself. Nay, he is not fully a man till he 
receives, as it were, the spurs of knighthood, 
in taking on the powers and privileges of a 
person. The world is coming to see this. 

We may now easily see the important fact 
which generations of religious thinkers were 
groping after under the rather misleading 
name of " conversion." Dr. G. Stanley Hall 
and others who are making a psychological 
study of childhood and youth tell us that at 
the age of dawning maturity the moral and 
spiritual nature, beginning to confront the 
mysteries of life, tends to adjust itself to new 



196 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

and larger relations. The youth awakes to 
see that he is not here to lead a tiny, sepa- 
rate life, but that he belongs to the universe. 
The tendency to recognize this majestic fact 
may be stifled and checked, as the tendency 
of the apple tree to bear fruit in its season 
may be thwarted by a blight. We are simply 
tracing the normal and healthy movement of 
life, when the youth has his fair chance to 
grow to full manhood. If now he takes the 
course of his true development, if he makes 
the new and larger adjustments of his life to 
meet the grand environment to which he 
belongs, in this case he becomes a person. 
His life answers back to the promptings of 
the life of the universe, and begins to ex- 
hibit the likeness of God. When once this 
change of attitude toward the larger and 
higher life has taken place in him, we do not 
say that he is " saved," for he has never been 
lost, but we may say that " it is well with 
him." He can now be trusted and depended 
upon; he will fit his place in the organic 
body of society. He has become a helper 



THE COST OF PEUSONALITY, 197 

and friend of men; his life now assumes 
unity and takes on its proper beauty and 
character. There are many temptations from 
which he is henceforth clear. How, for ex- 
ample, can a man who really believes in a 
divine universe do a deliberate injustice or 
stoop to a career of selfishness ? 

The fault to be found with most churches 
of all denominations is, that they fail to 
understand the significance of personality 
and of the natural process of transition 
thi'ough which a youth enters upon it. 
They altogether minimize the importance 
of this transition period. They often make 
the change seem dreadful and supernatural 
which is, in fact, thoroughly normal, divine, 
beautiful, and full of hope. 

The true teaching about personality adds 
a momentous factor in all education. How 
can that be a complete education which fails 
to bring the youth out of the illusions of child- 
hood into the solid realities of a manly per- 
sonality ? How can that be a university out 
of whose doors youth pour into the world — 



198 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

still vain, narrow, arrogant, self-seeking ego- 
tists — to do the deeds of selfishness ? How 
can the university have fulfilled its true disci- 
pline, if while its students know the relation 
of the little earth to the great central sun 
they do not apprehend the relation of their 
own lives to the life of the universe ? Let us 
agree that no youth is educated till he has 
learned to be a grown man, a person ; that is, 
till Good Will altogether possesses him, uses 
all his powers, and makes him its happy in- 
strument. What else is a man for ? What 
higher life can he possess ? Let us agree 
that no man is fitted to teach in a univer- 
sity unless he believes with all his heart 
in the divine universe, some little part of 
whose activities it is his business to inter- 
pret. How can the teacher bring the youth 
forward and up to the heights of true person- 
ality unless the teacher has himself become 
a person, that is, a constant, loving, benefi- 
cent will, like the will of God? 

The churches will sometime take up this 
splendid message. The world will have no 



THE COST OF PERSONALITY. 199 

use for any other type of church. Why 
should a church, at least a church bearing the 
name of the greatest lover of men, bury his 
gospel and put off life till another existence ? 
Life is here ; God is here. Churches exist to 
bring men face to face with God. What is 
a church for, except to possess men's souls 
with active, earnest, gladsome good will, run- 
ning in all the channels of a wise intelligence, 
irrigating and fertilizing all human enter- 
prises with its life? Of what use is the 
minister of a church, unless, having attained 
true personality, he reaches the helping 
hand to show all kinds and conditions of 
men the straightest path upward? 

Here is that of which all the poets and 
prophets have sung. Here is that which 
all the saints and heroes have practiced. It 
is offered to-day as the crown of youth. 
Why should youth defer putting on its joy- 
ous crown? Why should men lead feeble, 
restless, crippled lives ? Hear Robert 
Browning, the poet of real personality. Is 
it not splendid truth that he sings ? — 



200 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

*' For life with all it yields of joy and woe, 
And hope and fear, — believe the aged friend, — 
Is just the chance o' the prize of learning love, 
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is ; 
And that we hold thenceforth to the uttermost 
Such prize despite the envy of the world, 
And, having gained truth, keep truth ; that is all." 



THE BELIGION OF THE MAN. 201 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE RELIGION OF THE CHILD AND THE 
RELIGION OF THE MAN. 

Wherever men think, especially in the 
great centers of civilization, a change is 
passing over their minds, touching all the 
institutions of religion. There have been 
periods of unconcern or religious doubt be- 
fore now, as in the time of the Roman Em- 
pire and the French Revolution. The atti- 
tude of men is different to-day ; it is less 
boyish and more serious. There are those 
who give it a decidedly pessimistic interpre- 
tation. They are alarmed at the growing 
neglect of churches on the part of many of 
the best men and women. These excellent 
people are not opposed to church-going, but 
they have little or no use for it. There are 
other ways in which they are pleased to 



202 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

spend their Sundays. The truth is tliat 
they have no live interest in the things for 
which churches at present stand. They feel 
no necessity for what is conventionally 
known as " the worship of God ; " thej^ 
have no sense of duty, obliging them to 
pray to God or to praise him ; neither can 
they be easily frightened, as men once were, 
into worshiping God. Perhaps they have 
grievances against the institutions of relig- 
ion. What brave, helpful words, they 
complain, are the churches speaking in 
these days in behalf of human welfare ? 
Where do the churches carry the banners of 
reform ? There were never so many earnest 
people as there are to-day who are con- 
vinced that the institutions of religion are 
behind the needs of the times. 

What is the true explanation of this 
change of attitude of the modern world 
toward the churches ? It means a new de- 
mand for a higher form of religion. It 
means that men are loosening their hold, as 
they must, of the lower round of the ladder. 



THE BELIGION OF THE MAN, 203 

in order presently the better to seize a 
higher round. I wish to show that the 
present upheaval in religious beliefs and 
habits is extremely radical and important ; 
it marks a sublime process of change from 
the religion of the childhood of the world to 
the religion of grown men. 

I can best illustrate what I mean from the 
history of the religious experience of any 
mature individual. In every such case you 
will discover a wide change from the 
thoughts and feelings of childhood. It has 
often been a change that passed for a time 
through the shadows of doubt, where the 
teachings of the child life were subjected to 
vigorous questioning. But in the case of 
normal growth the movement is not toward 
the negation or denial of religion; it is 
rather toward a larger understanding and 
more positive affirmation. Many a man 
might say, as the mayor of a certain great 
American city once did say : '' I went to 
church as a boy because I had to go ; as a 
young man I went because I thought it my 



204 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

duty; I go now because I enjoy it." The 
truth is, that the man needs a very different 
form of religion to meet his needs and to 
satisfy his mind, from that which satisfies 
children. You expect that the man's religion 
will grow and change to correspond to the 
growth of his thought and his character. 
The change which the normal or representa- 
tive man thus experiences is the change 
through which men generally must also pass. 
As you see here and there a single tufted top 
in a cornfield, you know by that token that 
the whole field will sooner or later " be 
white to the harvest." So the multitude of 
men tend in due time to follow the course 
of their leaders in thought and conduct. 
See now if the indications are not well 
marked that mankind, in so far as civiliza- 
tion has set in, is about to rise to a new 
grasp of religion, — in short, to a religion 
that fits grown and civilized men. 

The characteristics of the religion of the 
child are few and simple. In the first place 
the child's religion is taken on authority ; he 



THE RELIGION OF THE MAN. 205 

believes whatever he is told by his parents 
or bj^ priests and ministers ; he takes truths 
and superstitions with equal credulity. A 
child's religion also consists largely of con- 
ventional forms and ceremonies. To say 
prayers, to count beads, to make the sign of 
the cross, to stand up and kneel down, 
— pageants, shows, candles, processions, — 
such things seem to the childish mind to 
make the essence of religion. The child 
associates religion with certain special places 
and with a peculiar atmosphere. A grand 
temple, with its half lights, with incense, 
and music, appeals to the instincts of won- 
der, awe, and fear. That God should be in 
the thunder seems to the childish mind more 
likely than that God should be in " the still 
small voice." 

The child's religion, if it is moral at all, 
has only a conventional morality. Religion 
demands the observance of certain duties, as, 
for instance, keeping Sunday, or confessing 
one's sins. It forbids murder and blasphemy. 
The child merely learns the ten command- 



206 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

ments by rote. How rarely do children ever 
catch the spirit that lifts the rules into so 
many forms of beauty ? The religion of the 
child touches only a part and surface of his 
life. He is religious and worshipful to-day ; 
to-morrow he goes to his school or to his 
sport. He is religious when he says his 
prayers ; the next moment he forgets whether 
he has said them. 

The child's thought about his religion is 
apt to be selfish. He conceives of a great 
Power above him who has favors to bestow, 
who punishes disobedience, who demands 
certain observances. God is like a great 
unseen king, somewhat awful, kind to his 
friends and subjects, dangerous to his ene- 
mies. It is safe and well to obey the 
mysterious monarch. 

The religion of the child is the religion 
of childish people everywhere. It is capa- 
ble of an infinite variety of forms, such as 
we actually see among savage races. While 
men still lived in tribal separateness and 
before the standards of civilization had yet 



THE RELIGION OF THE MAN, 207 

been set, there were as many religions as 
there were languages and dialects. Men 
were trying experiments both in religion and 
in language. 

The childish or barbarous mind is quick 
to misunderstand and to conventionalize ; 
it seizes the form, the accident, or the cere- 
mony, and erects it into a fetich. It craves 
pictures and idols to worship. How could 
the great ethical teachings of the Hebrew 
prophets, or the humane and spiritual ideals 
of Jesus, pass into the vital currency of the 
human race among the childish contempo- 
raries of Constantine's bishops, or the wild, 
boyish lords with whom Wycliffe labored? 
The world was not yet ready for the grown 
man's religion ; the teachers and mission- 
aries who understood it were few; the 
printing-press and popular education were 
not yet prepared to bring it to men's doors. 

It is only within the nineteenth century 
that any wide dissatisfaction with the 
world's childhood religions was possible, 
intelligent, or likely to bear hopeful fruit. 



208 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

Meanwhile priestcraft in all manner of 
forms, gross and subtle, held men's minds 
in thraldom, persecuted fearless thinkers, and 
made the institutions of religion almost uni- 
versally the means of ambition and even the 
bulwark of special and class privileges. In 
spite of splendid exceptions, in spite of 
sporadic movements of reform, a selfish 
ministry or priesthood watched and directed 
childish forms of religion. Can any one 
doubt that the history of Christianity illus- 
trates this statement ? We might say that 
the little clear flame that Jesus had lighted 
was speedily covered in the immense mass of 
rubbish that men piled in his name upon 
the fire. The fixe must needs smoulder for 
generations before it could again burst into 
flame. 

Turn now from all kinds of immature 
religion and see what are the plain character- 
istics of the religion that befits men ; yes, that 
the great leaders of men in every age have 
actually shown forth. These men, as dis- 
tinguished from children, have always taken 



THE RELIGION OF THE MAN, 209 

their religion at first hand and from the 
original sources. Men do not believe 
geometry and numbers because other men 
have told them to believe, but because they 
have seen for themselves the true relations 
of numbers and forms. So men, when once 
they come to their manhood, as full-grown 
persons, or sons of God, see for themselves 
the relations of truth ; see moral and spiritual 
realities, feel upon their souls the movement 
of the infinite spirit, and being pure in heart 
see God. It is true that such men have 
often appealed to the authority of prophets, of 
bibles, of Jesus. So men appeal to La Place, 
Newton, or Euclid. But this sort of appeal 
is always of those who see the same facts 
which the great masters teach. It is as if 
they said, " Behold in what high company 
we stand in affirming these realities ! They 
are not our truths : they are universal." So 
Jesus quoted Isaiah ; so the reformers quoted 
Jesus and Paul ; so we to-day quote the poets. 
We always quote the men who have best ex- 
pressed ''the things that are more excellent." 



210 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

Again, the religion of the grown man 
brings him into direct and natural access to 
God. No ceremonies, no liturgies, no chant- 
ing of choirs or intercession of priests is need- 
ful for communion with God. I do not say 
that these means may not be used ; in fact 
there is nothing that may not be used to 
translate the thought of God. The grand 
temple with its ancient traditions, the village 
meeting-house with its bare simplicity, the 
forests, the ocean, the smile of a friend, the 
word of a little child, a passage of a familiar 
psalm, 

*' A sunset touch, 

A fancy from a flower bell, some one's death, 

A chorus-ending from Euripides " — 

what may not be the chosen means to com- 
municate the innermost fact of the universe, 
God's love to his children? 

There is no conventionality in this easy 
approach of the soul to God. As friend 
meets friend, as the grown son meets his 
father on the easy terms of intimate, common 
interests and a common work, so the man in 



THE RELIGION OF THE MAN, 211 

whose life good will is the controlling cur- 
rent '' thinks the thoughts of God." All 
conventions, usages, habitudes, sacred places, 
set prayers, all the formal barriers that sepa- 
rated man from the sight of the flaming Sinai, 
are put aside forever, or else turned to con- 
struct the channels of life. 

In the religion of the grown man fear and 
dread have passed away. Once the soul stood 
on guard ; unknown, alien powers besieged 
it ; around its citadel were haunting alarms ; 
truth itself took on the garb of a foe. How 
many good men with childish minds have 
feared to read or think, lest some new dis- 
covery should darken the face of the heavens ! 
But now the grown man learns to go forth 
into all the universe, seeking new proofs of 
divine beauty, order, structure, and goodness. 
With Paul he cries, " If God be for us, who 
can be against us ? " Are we not citizens of 
a divine universe ? All the experiences of 
life find a wide, profound, and inspiring 
interpretation in this conception. 

The child's view of religion was merely of 



212 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

a single and somewhat awful aspect of life. 
The grown man finds in his religion that 
which unifies every fact and experience. 
What each science does for a single depart- 
ment of the outward world, — botany for the 
plants, geology for the rocks, — religion does 
for every side and aspect of the total life of 
man. Religion places you at the center where 
all things unfold ; you see somewhat as God 
sees. Is not your intelligence of the same 
nature with that which everywhere expresses 
itself under the same laws of mind ? Tiny 
as man's body is, does not his thought act- 
ually take in the vast interstellar spaces, and 
go out on a ceaseless quest after reality ? 

The child's idea of worship was of a per- 
functory task or duty. God demanded it ; 
the childish mind must perform it and turn 
then to something else. Even when it was 
pleasing the child soon wearied of it. What 
a totally different meaning worship had for 
Jesus ! To him it was rest and refresh- 
ment; it was the drawing of the waters of 
life from everlasting fountains. The great 



THE BELIGION OF THE MAN. 213 

life is Good Will. What is the use of wor- 
ship, unless the personal life of the wor- 
shiper beats in unison with this universal 
Good Will ? It is as if the electric current 
passed in its mighty power over our heads. 
We reach up and attach the little car of our 
individual life, and we are borne obedient 
to the beneficent motion. 

The test of worship in this sense is real 
and practical. In worshiping God, what do 
we do ? We utter the words and show forth 
the deeds of true and full-grown men. 
How do we feel? We feel reverent, glad- 
some, friendly, as children of God. We 
come into unison with all other men who 
take the common attitude of good will. 
Worship is not an act ; it is a new and 
higher way of life ; it is a temper and atti- 
tude. The essence of it is to live and think 
and feel, and especially to express ourselves, 
as sons of God. Imagine the most noble, 
hearty, beautiful human life ! To live that 
kind of life is worship. 

It follows that the grown man's religion 



214 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

is both ethical and spiritual. It is al- 
together practical : the man's feet stand 
firmly upon this earth, although his eyes 
look toward the gleaming ideals. There 
is nothing so practical as to do the duties 
of our earth faithfully, efficiently, intel- 
ligently, with a view to the social wel- 
fare. The religion of good will urges 
every man of us toward this kind of effort. 
In this conception we each belong to a great 
orderly host, to God's friendly army of con- 
struction and civilization. Every life, every 
legitimate trade and profession, every detail 
of daily work enters into the plan. I mean 
that every hour of every day may be so lived, 
with such obedience to duty, in such good 
temper, with such an ideal of the social 
good, as to add its item of excellence to the 
wealth of the world. The selfish life is 
separated from other lives ; it is " material 
out of place." So, on the contrary, each 
good life or just deed counts, fits its place, 
and goes to build the walls of the eternal 
house of humanity. Who desires anything 



THE RELIGION OF THE MAN, 215 

more practical than to leave enduring work- 
manship behind him for those who shall 
follow ? 

In calling the religion of the grown man 
'' spiritual " I have not meant that it is mys- 
tical, except in that sense in which all 
things at their sources pass into a wonderful 
borderland of mystery. I have said that 
law, beauty, justice, truth, love, belong to 
the realm of the things ''unseen and eter- 
nal." We call these things spiritual, inas- 
much as they are certainly not material. 
Religion consists in the realm where these 
realities abide. To love men and show 
mercy, to follow truth, to give our lives to 
carry the good will, — I call this spiritual 
religion. To live, act, think, feel, as children 
of God — this is to live the life of the 
spirit. What is there more intelligent than 
this? 

It is possible to understand now what it 
is to love God. The writer of the '' Epistle 
of John" knew this. Whoever loves his 
brother, we are there told, loves God. It 



216 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

must be so, since all that is lovable in men 
is the expression of the life of God. Ad- 
miring goodness wherever I see it, loving it, 
cooperating with the men who express it, 
struggling to attain it myself and to help 
others attain it, — in every such effort I am 
close to the heart of God. Let me be glad 
in this fact. 

It is often asked why there are so many 
sects and religions. Will it always be so? 
There will be many sects dividing men, as 
long as egotism, rivalries, animosities, sep- 
arate them. Warring religions match and fit 
the lives of warring men or races. There 
cannot be divisive religions when full-grown 
men face the grand facts of the universe, 
with reverence for truth, with respect and 
love for one another. There may be different 
ways to prove one and the same proposition 
in geometry, but those who have learned 
the proposition itself will all understand 
one another's different explanations. So the 
man who knows the deep things of religion, 
as a grown man knows them by heart, will 



THE RELIGION OF THE MAN. 217 

understand the universal language in which 
religion voices itself. No true man can bar 
other true men out of his church. Already 
the great leaders of religion throughout the 
history of the world speak the common lan- 
guage. Draw near to them, and the closer 
you come the fewer will be the dissonances 
among them. James Martineau knows 
what Jonathan Edwards means. Good 
Bishop Berkeley is no enemy to Spinoza or 
to Kant. Jesus and Confucius both give 
the Golden Rule. 

A profound question here presses. Admit, 
you say, that we have a sublime conception of 
religion. Admit that men have attained this 
type of religion and are now doubtless prac- 
ticing it. Still it is the religion of the few 
and not of the many. How rare are the men 
and women who have caught sight of the 
idea of true personality ! What the world 
wants is a religion for every one, for chil- 
dren, for childish and savage men. We 
want no new form of the old " doctrine of 
election " for a chosen caste. The question 



218 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

then is : Can you teach the religion of 
Good Will ? Can you adapt it to childish 
minds ? Can missionaries carry it to barbar- 
ous nations ? 

We can teach everything, I answer, that 
man needs to know. We can take a class 
in any district school and, once having 
trained teachers, we can show childish minds 
what was long the secret of university 
scholars, great geometers, or skilled chem- 
ists. It is not childishness so much as it is 
egotism, arrogance, selfishness, that is in the 
way of the religion of Good Will. The 
common mind, the simple people, will not 
oppose it ; they know that it is their friend. 
Did not the common people receive Jesus 
gladly ? The sophisticated and the conven- 
tional people, the owners of entrenched 
monopolies and vested interests, — these 
have always been the obstacles in the way of 
every attempt at human betterment. 

See now what hopeful means we have in 
hand, such as men never had in earlier times, 
for the training of childish minds in the re- 



THE RELIGION OF THE MAN, 219 

ligion of good will. Imagine a community 
where a considerable number of people have 
intelligently adopted this religion. Let us 
say that they have Jesus' guiding ideas, as 
set forth in the Beatitudes and the Golden 
Rule, while they have the modern man's 
thought about the orderly universe and about 
the practical duties of civilization. They 
have learned trust from the twenty-third 
Psalm, devotion from the heroic stories of 
forty centuries, generous public spirit and 
patriotism from noble modern leaders of 
men, and the scientific temper from Darwin, 
Romanes, and Gray. What will they do for 
the children in their homes and schools ? 

We have said that children want authority 
for their religion. But there will be scores 
of the best men and women in such a com- 
munity as we have imagined who will be 
saying, in words, deeds, and beautiful lives : 
" This is God's world ; trust God ; fear 
nothing ; live like his children." No words 
of authority out of the past, great as they 
may be, touch the children's hearts so much 



220 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

as tones, looks, and familiar sayings from 
fathers and mothers, whose every act is in 
the language of an impressive and joyous 
religion. The children will believe as the 
parents believe, not as they profess, but as 
they honestly think. Do the parents hold 
that Good Will is at the heart of the uni- 
verse ? Do they act in accord with this 
thought? Never doubt, then, but that the 
children will think so too. When did relig- 
ion ever spread except by the words of such 
living authority, bought at the cost of 
honest experience ! 

How indeed can any modern man sup- 
pose that the religion of the future will 
lack authority ? On the contrary, it has all 
the authority that ever existed. In every 
household will be the books that make the 
growing Bible of the race, the total precious 
record of noble human experience, all the 
most splendid and uplifting words of faith. 
A chorus of voices in many a language and 
from every race utter one testimony to the 
religion of Good Will. The grand passages 



THE BELIGION OF THE MAN. 221 

of literature — poetry, history, and philos- 
ophy — tell the same story. 

The lives of heroes, teachers, explorers, 
statesmen, men of action, men of science, lov- 
ers of mankind, — a great series of inspiring 
biography, — bring the same message. What 
is the secret of human success ? It is cour- 
age, integrity, righteousness, faith, good 
will. Who have had power to change the 
face of the world? The men who have 
lived like sons of God have held this 
power. There was never such a consensus 
of those who say this with authority. Man 
never had such rich illustrative material to 
make it plain to boys and girls. Our relig- 
ion in fact meets the ancient test of the 
most '' Catholic " faith. It is '' that which 
has always been believed by all good men 
everywhere." 

The child wants his religion embodied in 
persons. Who can use an abstract relig- 
ion? This does not mean that the child's 
religion must be that of a single person, 
however august. Give the child as many 



222 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

persons as you can in whom God's love has 
been made real, and he will never lack an 
object for his religion. Show him the per- 
son of Jesus by all means, and tell him that 
God's love is like Jesus' love. Is not God's 
love also like his mother's love? Is not 
God's justice like the justice of the best 
man in the city, the most upright merchant, 
the most fearless public servant? Loving, 
admiring, following righteousness in every 
visible personal form, the child will be wor- 
shiping the unseen and righteous God. 

The children want forms and ceremonies. 
What beautiful forms the religion of good 
will may assume in homes such as we have 
imagined ! What trustful words of prayer, 
fit for childhood, will be taught at the 
mother's knee, as of old! There will be 
no tone of dread; the prayer will convey 
the sense of gladness, hope, unselfishness. 
What cheerful songs will also set to music 
the child's feeling of the Eternal Goodness ! 

The child needs visible objects and sym- 
bols to help his mind to climb toward God. 



THE RELIGION OF THE MAN. 223 

He shall have them. Let the church be 
such a symbol, if you like ; let the " pictures 
of the saints " help his eye ; let him admire 
the gentle Madonna ; let him 

** . . . find real saints to draw from — Magdalen, 
Peter, and Paul ; " 

let him know how wide the brotherhood of 
the heroes and saints is ; tell him about . 
them and what they did for mankind. Is 
the painted glass window in the great cathe- 
dral a symbol of religion ? Has the cross 
a message ? So also God's paintings spread 
abroad over the sky and the face of the 
fields, the icy crystals of the winter, the 
shining flowers, the orderly procession of the 
stars, — all these have a message from the 
Eternal Father. When was man so rich in 
the symbols of the religion of good will as 
he is to-day? To the religious mind the 
whole world speaks of God. Tell the child 
the wonderful parables* 

The child needs a certain atmosphere in 
which his religious feeling may grow. 



224 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

What shall that atmosphere be ? Shall it be 
an atmosphere of fear and dread ? Shall it 
not rather be the sunny atmosphere of love, 
kindliness, truth, in the home, in the school, 
in the workshop, as well as in the church? 
Who can escape this wholesome atmosphere 
of the religion of the children of God ? 

The child needs to be told what to do ; he 
wants conventional rules of conduct before 
he learns to make the laws of the world 
his own. How shall parents and teachers 
provide these rules? By reciting the ten 
commandments once a week together? 
Much more than this : by incorporating the 
spirit of justice and a constant friendliness 
into a thousand daily acts. The children 
are natural imitators. Show them gentle- 
ness, fidelity, truthfulness, and they will do 
what their elders do. Hundreds of kinder- 
gartens already give evidence of this. 
True, there are wild, headstrong, and diffi- 
cult children. These need all the more 
that their elders shall do themselves the 
things which they require. 



THE RELIGION OF THE MAN. 225 

The child is apt to think that religion is 
only for a part of life. Let him associate 
every day with those who bind all thoughts 
and acts into the unity of their religion. 
The child is apt to think that religion is for 
the purpose of getting something. Let him 
live with grown men and women, the vital 
breath of whose religion is to share and give. 
Once teach the teachers, once convert the 
parents, and there will never be any difficulty 
in organizing our religion so that it shall say 
its simple message to children and to childish 
men. It will take on its own natural organ- 
ization, life inspiring life, friend telling 
friend its happiness. Whether with an es- 
tablishment or not, whether with paid or 
unpaid ministry, the religion which all souls 
need, which generosity and eloquence are 
committed together to proclaim, which in- 
spires music, is certain to spread abroad. 

Ah, but " the way is so long ! " The 
climate of the world is still so cool toward 
the tender plant of religion ! All history is 
written for our encouragement on this point. 



226 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

What plant has actually shown such endur- 
ing tenacity as the religion of good will? 
Take for example the marvelous story of 
the Hebrew people after they had been 
carried into captivity in Babylon. When 
was there ever a more gloomy and hope- 
less period? Organized religion was over- 
thrown ; sacred days, symbols, and places 
were swept away; priests could no longer 
perform their office ; nationality was ex- 
tinguished ; the scattered captive people 
were surrounded by vast servile populations, 
by luxury, vice, and idolatry. How could 
children be brought up to virtue in the 
Babylonian servitude? What was the use 
of struggling for the ideals of righteousness 
and monotheism ? 

And yet there has never been a time when 
a little struggle was so prolific of good. 
Over the narrow bridge that a few devoted 
Hebrew families constructed was passing 
the treasure of religious life for mankind. 
eTesus was soon publishing the secret for 
which vmknown men had given their lives. 



THE RELIGION OF THE MAN. 227 

Presently the whole world possessed what 
those true-hearted Hebrews had saved from 
fire and flood. A procession of torch-bearers 
were carrymg it on from age to age, lifting 
it where it could never be lost. At last 
the science and inventions of a wonderful 
century bring it to every man's door. 

Who are we to complain that God's times 
are slow and his chariots wait ? If the time 
is ripe, as many think, for the coming of the 
religion of good will, if the advance of man 
in the new century must needs take this 
direction, are we not glad to be in the van 
of those who shall use and practice and not 
vainly profess the gospel for which the hun- 
gry world cries ? If, on the other hand, we 
happen to be yet far in advance of our 
age, if we are too few for the overwhelming 
needs of the world, are we not glad that it is 
given to us and to our children to carry the 
precious seed, to make it grow in many a 
sunny spot, and so insure at last that the 
world's supply shall be ready against the 
certain demands of the future ? There is a 



228 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

mighty word of the old prophet, " I will 
overturn, and overturn, and overturn, till he 
whose right it is shall reign." He who 
interprets these words into the doctrine 
of spiritual evolution will never be dis- 
couraged. 

As a matter of fact, the times when vital 
and genuine religion has made its greatest 
gains in the world have been those times 
when creeds were questioned, when the out- 
ward institutions of religion have suffered 
disorganization, when priests, prophets, or 
ministers of religion have had to go without 
emoluments, and take risks and ventures. 
It is not strange if a similar period is before 
the world to-day. Men long for a religion 
of reality. It must demand effort then from 
those who believe it. It must offer in place 
of ceremonies or " creeds of fear " a stirring 
ethical creed ; it must move to the creation 
of a better and really civilized human so- 
ciety. Must we not learn to say ourselves 
and to teach our children to say somewhat 
as follows ? — 



THE BELIGION OF THE MAN, 229 

" We will try to do whatever duty, truth, 
or good will — the voice of God in us — 
requires. We will endeavor to preserve 
the friendly temper at all times and to all 
men. We will never return evil for evil. 
We will try to help our fellows whenever 
opportunity offers. 

" We will not fear to speak the truth. We 
will not shrink from hearing the truth, 
whether it is pleasant to us or not. We 
will trust that in the end the truth is 
always good. 

" We will live the pure life, holding the 
same standard for men and women ; and we 
will use our influence to extend the rule of 
purity among men. 

" We will conduct our business honorably, 
with the idea of the public good in view; 
and we will never knowingly do anything 
against the public good. We will hold 
property as a trust for righteous and helpful 
uses. 

"We will favor the use of all methods 
that tend to peace among men and between 



230 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

nations. We will give ready hearing and 
hearty support to those who work for the 
benefit of mankind. 

'' We will look for the signs of goodness 
in men ; Ave will habitually expect of them, 
and especially of children, their best con- 
duct, and we will trust them as far as we 
can. 

" In the changes and vicissitudes of life 
we will try to live with courage and hope as 
those who believe in goodness and in God. 
We will cultivate the mood of mind in 
which one loves to say: 'Thy kingdom 
come ; thy will be done.' "" 



THE PROCESS OF CIVILIZATION. 231 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE PROCESS OF CIVILIZATION. 

It has been common, according to the 
terms of the old-fashioned dualism, to con- 
ceive of life as a battle. There was doubt- 
less something to be gained and learned in 
this conception. There are soldierly vir- 
tues ; there is a soldierly spirit ; the heroic 
lessons, the figures, the illustrations of war- 
fare, have entered into our language and 
our literature, and into our very souls, be- 
yond recall. We are glad that we have 
them, as we are solemnly glad of the terri- 
ble stories of the martyrs, as we are glad of 
the cross, as we are glad of our childhood, 
with its bruises and falls. So we are glad 
of the childhood of our race, of its wild 
days and wild men, of its shipwrecks and 



232 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

sieges, its ruined cities and gloomy dun- 
geons, its fierce conquerors, its lurid tragedies 
offsetting its stormy joys, its feastings, and 
its love-songs, its grand Iliads and Odysseys, 
its mighty Psalms of Hope. How could 
we be what we are if we were cut adrift 
from the wonderful childhood of our race ? 

This does not mean that we wish to live 
our childhood over again. It does not 
mean that fighting must go on in the twen- 
tieth century, any more than it means that 
slavery and persecution must go on. The 
conception of our earth as a battleground 
is not a permanent truth. In fact, the con- 
ception of life as a battle was as childish as 
Homer's quarrelsome pantheon on Mount 
Olympus. 

See now the new conception of life which 
befits the religion of grown men and consti- 
tutes true civilization. This new concep- 
tion is of a vast constructive enterprise 
which all men are set to accomplish together. 
Think of the greatest human undertaking ; 
think of such works as the Suez and Panama 



THE PBOCESS OF CIVILIZATION. 233 

Canals. There is the need of all possible 
ingenuity, of courage, of patience, of hazard- 
ous experiments, of forethought, of the 
expense of lives and treasure. There are 
enormous obstacles to be overcome ; there 
are vast engineering problems ; there is 
need of every new economy and labor-saving 
invention. Yet every effort, every stroke 
of work, every bright thought, yes, every 
useless plan set aside in favor of a better 
plan, every life lost in the initial processes 
of the work, has its place in the grand result. 
Nowhere does the great engineer recognize 
any real enemies to his work. There is no 
hate in the universe pitted against him. 
Even the forces of nature wait to be har- 
nessed to assist man's endeavor. Thousands 
of laborers willingly do their share in over- 
coming actual obstacles and bringing the 
work to its victorious completion. So with 
the labor of human civilization. The plan 
is from God ; the power is his ; the work 
is through the hands of his children. To 
do this work is life and gladness. 



234 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

Is there no fight or antagonism, some one 
asks, in man's own nature ? Is there not 
a battle between selfishness and altruism? 
Must there not be a battle likewise between 
the altruists and selfish men? Such ques- 
tions as these show how hard it is for the 
old dualism to die ! 

The conflict between self-love and the 
larger love is only in appearance, it is not 
real. What is best for the hive, that is also 
best as a rule for the bee. The good emperor 
saw this. It is clearly seen to be true even 
in child-life. It becomes the law of hap- 
piness for the grown man. If any act 
or practice hurts mankind, then it hurts 
the man who does it. If he is intelligent 
and his sympathy is keen, such action be- 
comes impossible for him. Only that kind 
of conduct which is just, truthful, beneficial, 
of the universal order, seems desirable to 
the man w^ho has attained his growth. He 
loves righteousness ; he chooses to do good ; 
he loves to take the high ventures that 
Good Will commands. The conflict lasted 



THE PROCESS OF CIVILIZATION. 235 

only so long as he did not see the facts of 
life. But now the energy which once went 
into the struggle with his lower self goes 
where energy effects something — into posi- 
, tive and orderly work. 

The conception of life as constructive 
rather than antagonistic effort finds beauti- 
ful illustration in every approach that we 
make toward true civilization. You measure 
the quality and the value of the civilization 
of individuals or peoples, not by the houses 
which they live in or the clothes which 
they wear, but by the width and power of 
their sympathy. The savage life is full of 
all manner of antagonisms, jealousies, feuds, 
and hates. Tribe is separate from tribe ; 
men spy on their fellows in wearisome 
suspicion. The backward communities of 
America, such as the mountain region of 
Kentucky, display these Old World divisions 
and prevalent hates. The duller the mind, 
the narrower the education, the slower the 
sympathies, the quicker men always are to 



236 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

take up quarrels, to find food for hatred, to 
split up into parties and sects. 

You can trace the progress of civilization 
through thousands of years in the pages of 
the Old and New Testaments. The primi- 
tive Hebrew life begins in tribal war. The 
savage life survives even in the Psalms. 
How many times do we find the use of 
the word " enemy " in them ? More than 
half of them are marred by the expressions 
of men's hate. Many verses have become 
impossible for the uses of civilized men's 
devotion. 

As the early Hebrews were themselves, so 
was their God. He hated as they hated. 
Was he not a " jealous " God ? Contrast the 
story of Samuel hewing Agag in pieces 
with the wonderful teaching of the book of 
Jonah ! To the higher thought there is a 
God of the Ninevites as well as of the 
Hebrews. Here dawns the vision of ''the 
Father of infinite mercies." 

The New Testament gathers to a focus in 
certain illuminating passages the whole net 



THE PROCESS OF CIVILIZATION. 237 

experience of the leaders of the race m the 
way of civilization. Take Jesus' words, 
" Love your enemies." Here is a new law 
for the world ; here is an end to all barbarism 
and strife. No wonder that men could not 
believe it, or take Jesus seriously. They 
could not yet conceive the possibility of a 
man facing, without a thought of bitterness, 
such a mob of sneering foes as Jesus met 
in Pilate's hall. Their minds were still in 
the toils of barbarous habits. The world had 
still a devil in it to be hated and feared. 
Were there not " children of the wicked one " 
whom the good must fight and hate ? How 
then could the early Christians help hating 
heretics, infidels, persecutors ? How could 
later generations help hating Turks, Jews, 
Pagans ? Were not all these the enemies of 
their master ? Hating outsiders, they hated 
one another also. All dualism involves 
hatred and war. 

The great teaching of Jesus needed to 
be retranslated. Let it read, " Have no 
enemies ! " This is what it means. If you 



238 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

love any one he straightway ceases to be an 
enemy. Love all men; have therefore no 
enemies. 

This law grows immediately out of the 
nature of God. If God's truest name is 
Love, there can be no enmity in him toward 
any. ''Not toward a Satan," you ask, 
" such as Milton imagined ? " Suppose for a 
moment that Milton's Satan existed. How 
could such a being exist? Would he be in- 
dependent of God? Then God would not 
be God. Satan must exist, then, if at all, 
because of some faint expression of God's 
life in him. If God's life then shines in him, 
there is left something to admire, to love, to 
save. How could Satan defeat God, change 
his nature, and turn his love to hate ? 

If God, then, has no enemies, and if in a 
real sense we are his children, we must be 
like him in having no enemies. There is no 
way in which we can be so like God as in 
our good will. This is the meaning of 
Jesus' great word in the Sermon on the 
Mount : '' Be ye therefore perfect, as your 



THE PROCESS OF CIVILIZATION, 239 

Father in heaven is perfect." Jesus is not 
speaking of absolute perfectness. He is 
speaking of the practical treatment of men. 
God, he says, is perfect, that is, all-round 
in his love. His sun shines on the evil and 
the good. Be ye like him, all-round in 
your love. Let your goodness, like God's 
gpodness, shine on all men, not merely on 
those who are good to you. Turn your good 
side on men ; never turn hatred upon them. 
There is surely nothing impracticable in 
this. 

We meet now a serious question. Can 
men altogether respect a kind of life from 
which the element of antagonism, warfare, 
and indignation has disappeared? This objec- 
tion is overwhelming if it points to any 
lack of the fullness of life in our new civili- 
zation. We must readily grant that there 
was a picturesqueness, which modern and 
civilized men at least see in the retrospect, 
in the feudal castles, the narrow walled 
towns with their fever-haunted streets, the 
bows and arrows and mailed armor of our 



240 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

forefathers. Perhaps we lose something in 
sweeping away these hoary symbols of the 
past. Perhaps our ancestors had a certain 
use and enjoyment in their poetical con- 
ceptions of the warring powers of the air, 
and even in their picture of a literal devil, 
going about like ''a roaring lion seeking 
whom he may devour." We should be 
sorry if they did not have the compen- 
sations that belonged to their life ; as Jesus 
says of even the Pharisees and the hypo- 
crites, " Verily I say unto you, they have 
their reward." We are none the less sure, 
upon the whole, that the world does well to 
put off barbarous things, as the man does 
well to put off childish things. Each new 
stage of life will bring its own interests, its 
delights, its picturesqueness also. 

The truth is, that what men demand in 
life, and miss if they do not find it, is not 
antagonism and warfare, but struggle, effort, 
cost, strenuousness. It is not hate and 
enmity that have ennobled warfare. It is 
not killing that has made the life of the 



THE PROCESS OF CIVILIZATION. 241 

soldier fruitful in moral lessons. It is the 
nerve, endurance, hardihood, and courage 
that we love to see. Of these superb qual- 
ities there is likely to be a demand to the end 
of the human course ; for it is out of these 
things that life is forever being wrought. 
The grown man conceives the universe, 
not as two impossible opposites in conflict, 
but as one harmonious structure ; out of his 
soul, brought into unison with God, all hate 
has vanished ; he holds himself in glad and 
willing obedience to every prompting of the 
^universal Good Will. I maintain that this 
is precisely the man in whom eager intelli- 
gence, fearless vigor, and constructive energy 
are consummated. Shall we call Nelson or 
Dewey a hero,'and not call Francis Parkman 
even more conspicuously a hero, who with 
never an enemy, yet conquering seemingly 
insuperable obstacles in cool, painstaking 
patience through the labors of a lifetime, 
at last gave the world an enduring memorial 
of a great episode in human history ? Shall 
we call Wellington a hero, and not call his 



242 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

countrymen Moffat and Livingstone even 
more complete heroes, who, though alone, 
feared nothing in all the wild continent of 
Africa ? Their love, growing strong, had cast 
out hate, bitterness, wrath, and all fear. 
Does any one think that such love lacks 
manly power ? Little does he know the na- 
ture of a grown man's love if he thinks 
this. 

'' Yes," some one may say, '^ it is a great 
teaching, to bid men have no enemies. But 
is such a rule practicable in this age of the 
world ? " The beauty of it is that it is al- 
together practicable ; it binds men together ; 
it puts an end to enmity ; it converts sup- 
posed enemies to friends. It works to civ- 
ilize the world. See in how many ways this 
new law is actually at work to-day. 

There is one profession at least in every 
modern nation in which the law of which 
we speak is recognized. Ministers of the 
Christian religion must have no enemies. 
The minister or priest must be the friend of 
every one whom he meets. What of the evil- 



THE PROCESS OF CIVILIZATION, 243 

minded, the dissolute men and women out- 
side the pale of society or the church ? The 
minister has not caught the idea of his pro> 
fession if he is not specially the friend of 
these. This is not a mere counsel of per- 
fection. The ideal is realized by an increas- 
ing number of faithful and humane men. A 
story told of the anti-slavery leader, Rev. 
Samuel J. May, illustrates this. He was at 
one time traveling by carriage alone in a 
desolate region where acts of violence had 
been recently perpetrated. Early in the 
day a rough-looking man appeared before 
him on the road with a club in his hand. 
The friendly minister drove up to the man 
and asked him if he would not like to ride. 
The two rode and talked all the morning, 
and after dinner the unknown man again 
joined Mr. May and accompanied him 
through the afternoon. At evening, when 
they separated, the man intimated that he 
had stood in the way that morning with 
evil design, and that he was more indebted 
than he could tell for the friendly treatment 



244 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

which had recalled his manhood. What 
power in the world is so mighty as fearless 
kindliness ? 

If the minister should have no enemies, 
it is not because he belongs to a separate 
class. His law of life is only the broad 
human law. The medical profession fur- 
nishes perhaps as many instances of this 
as the ministry. The whole business of the 
physician is to befriend men, cure and save 
them. The good doctor may be called to 
attend the worst man in the town ; he may 
have the care of the sick in the county jail. 
It makes no difference what the character 
of the patient is. The physician tries to do 
his best for him. Even when he expects 
never to get pay or thanks, he still tries to 
save life. What enemy has he in all the 
town? But ought he not to oppose the 
quack and impostor? If he opposes im- 
postors, this is no reason why he should ever 
hate them. Is there any way so effective 
to put down imposture as to do skilled and 
trained work such as no impostor can do? 



THE PROCESS OF CIVILIZATION. 245 

The teachers are another great class who 
must absolutely have no enemies. Show us 
the teacher who has favorites in his school, 
while he is hard on the dull and backward 
boys ; show us the teacher of whom any 
of his pupils can say, " He hates us," and we 
have found a teacher who has no place in a 
modern school. What is the teacher for, 
except to help and befriend his pupils ? The 
more refractory the human material in them, 
the greater call for his patience, energy, 
intelligence, good will, in order to make 
men of them. The power of wise love is 
actually working miracles every day in 
behalf of the blind, the deaf and dumb, 
the epileptic, and the feeble-minded. The 
motto of the true teacher is nil desperandum^ 
" to despair of none." 

We shall dare now to touch the most dif- 
ficult class of all, and to say that the men in 
business ought to have no enemies. We 
shall here fly in the face of certain strange 
popular interpretations of the Golden Rule. 
It means, some believe, that " one must find 



246 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

out what the other man wants to do, and must 
do it first." Must not business men plan 
and act as if in the presence of rivals and cut- 
throats ? Must they not entertain jealous- 
ies and suspicions of their competitors? 

Let us ask a more radical question. 
What is business ? Is it an ugly process of 
industrial warfare whereby some may get 
more than their share of the costly product 
of the world? Grant, if you like, that 
thousands of men believe something like 
this. It is nevertheless a false idea, and is 
doomed, with other falsehoods, to die. 
Business, whether in the manufacture or the 
distribution of the good things of the world, 
is a form of social or human service. No 
kind or method of business is legitimate 
unless it meets this true test of the universe 
— Is it beneficent? Does your business in 
some way serve the convenience or enrich- 
ment of mankind ? If it does this, you are 
God's servant in it, as truly as any minister 
who preaches in a pulpit. If it injures 
men, or if it does men no good in return for 



THE PROCESS OF CIVILIZATION, 247 

what you draw out of it, how is it better 
than stealing ? 

Suppose now a business man who con- 
ceives, as a grown man ought, what his 
business is for; who practices it precisely as 
a violinist plays his part in the orchestra. 
Why should this man have any enemies ? 
His customers are his friends whom he is 
seeking to serve ; every honest man in trade 
is his friend, who is doing also a part in a 
common work. But, you say, the dishonest 
men must be his enemies. Why ? They are 
not God's enemies. They are men to be 
pitied. What true man envies them, least 
of all, when they seem to succeed? You 
are sorry for them ; they and their children, 
most likely, are on the way to grief. More- 
over, of all foolish, weak, and childish emo- 
tions, enmity toward the dishonest is the 
most futile. When did it ever make the 
dishonest man honest? 

All this will be even plainer when we 
observe how the law " Have no enemies " 



248 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

works in the solution of certain great prob- 
lems now before the nation. Here is the 
problem, for instance, of how to treat '' the 
criminal class." The old idea was that they 
were enemies to human society, to be pun- 
ished accordingly. The new idea forbids us 
to recognize ''a criminal class." All men 
are of one blood. All men, at their worst, 
and on their selfish or animal side, are close 
to the danger line of crime, whether subtle 
or coarse. There is no salvation or health, 
except in the life of good will. 

But there are those who are habitual 
criminals, dangerous to society, who cer- 
tainly cannot be allowed at liberty to rob 
and murder. What shall we do with them ? 
The late Mrs. Johnson, the noble superin- 
tendent of the Sherborn Reformatory for 
Women, in Massachusetts, told us what to 
do with them. The most depraved women, 
immodest, violent, hardened, came to her. 
Did she hate them? Never! She treated 
them as a physician treats his patients. She 
pitied them, loved them, and searched for 



THE PROCESS OF CIVILIZATION. 249 

the spark of true womanhood hid in their 
souls. She found what she looked for. 
Wonderful stories are told of the victories 
of tliis energetic and unresting woman's 
love over her most violent patients. No 
enmity, threats, punishments, tortures, ever 
saved such women as she saved and redeemed 
to the uses of society and citizenship. 

We have another formidable problem in 
the political corruption and vulgar partisan- 
ship, rampant in every State, plundering rich 
cities, holding the balance of power in the 
Senate Chamber at Washington. We are 
tempted to hate our bosses, to despise our 
party leaders, to denounce them in public 
and private as the modern enemies of man- 
kind. How can we help being hostile to 
the Quays and Crokers ? How shall we 
ever escape their rule, unless we make war 
on them and their minions? 

This would have been plausible to say a 
hundred years ago. We ought to know 
better than to say it to-day. It is not even 
intelligent to hate ''the wicked bosses," 



250 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

much less to despise them, as the Pharisees 
once despised the publicans. Are they 
not men like us ? In them we see what 
selfishness does to degrade men. Are we 
free of selfishness? Do we ''virtuous" 
citizens, with our grand opportunities, do 
such generous public service as to boast 
over our neighbors as if we were men of a 
finer clay ? Nay ; the best public men never 
boast, never despise, and never hate. Abra- 
ham Lincoln teaches the world the same 
lesson that Jesus taught. 

This is not to say that we shall let the 
Quays and the Crokers govern our nation. 
This is not to say that we may not do well 
to use party organization. I mean that we 
must allow no '' enemies " in our politics. 
I mean that ill will, contempt, and denun- 
ciation separate men and tempt men to be 
what you denounce and despise them for. 
I mean that there is no man so corrupt that 
you can afford to treat him without sym- 
pathy. You praise the worst boy in the 
school when he tells the truth or does a kind 



THE PROCESS OF CIVILIZATION. 251 

act. You build upon good to erect more 
good. It is with men as with boys. Why 
shall we not then be glad if the opposite 
party proposes a just or patriotic measure ? 
Let us help them carry it through. Even 
when we firmly vote the "boodle alder- 
men" out of office, why should we give 
them cause to suspect us of being their per- 
sonal enemies ? Why should we seem to 
say, " I am holier than thou " ? Surely there 
is too much positive work that waits to be 
done in this world to permit any intelligent 
man to waste his energy in useless and 
petty antagonisms. 

The same great law works to solve the 
threatening labor troubles in our country. 
The real issue between labor and capital 
is not a question of wages, or an eight- 
hour day, or the right to join unions. 
There is a deeper difficulty, of which these 
questions are only the symptoms. The real 
trouble is that the capitalists and the work- 
ing-people think of each other as natural 
enemies. Jealousy, suspicion, and fears 



252 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

alienate men who ought to work together. 
Strikes and lockouts would hardly occur if 
men who call themselves Christians were 
real Christians, in the practical sense of 
haying no enemies. Study the story of any 
particular strike and you will discover the 
point where men, very likely employers, 
who ought to have been more intelligent, 
lost their patience or lost their temper ; you 
will find that there were moments when 
a ray of good humor or genuine human- 
ity would have been enough to dispel the 
darkness from men's faces, and to prevent 
waste and disaster. 

The same law applies to international re- 
lations. The old rule was to hold foreign 
powers as enemies. The law of civilization 
is to have no enemies. Imagine the United 
States adopting this law. Surely it be- 
fits the great Republic among whose 
people now flows the blood of all races. 
Imagine the United States using this mighty 
law when, at the outbreak of the Cuban war, 
the barbarous temptation arose of fighting 



THE PBOCESS OF CIVILIZATION. 253 

the Spaniards. "Are not the Spaniards," 
men cried, " our hereditary enemies ? Did 
they not practice the Inquisition? Have 
they not been the enemies of the human 
race ? Did they not blow up our war- 
ship?" So spoke the animal, savage, and 
revengeful spirit in all of us. Suppose 
then, before we plunged into war, that we 
had listened for the words of the relig- 
ion of Good Will. The millions of Spanish 
people were men like us. There were wives 
and mothers over the sea, like our wives 
and mothers, to weep at the death of 
husbands and sons. Could we possibly 
hate these suffering and oppressed people, 
victims themselves of centuries of ignorance 
and misrule ? If we had neither hated nor 
despised them, but held them to be our 
friends, it is almost certain that we could 
have devised some other method than fight- 
ing to adjust our grievances against their 
government. 

Suppose, again, that the American people 
and their President had also judged with 



254 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION. 

one consent that they had no enemies in the 
Philippine Islands ; suppose that no Ameri- 
can commissioner had breathed his selfish de- 
sire to exploit those islands for ourselves ; 
that no American soldier had written home 
his contempt for the brown men whom he 
was sent out to save from oppression. Could 
there have been any war, when sympathy, 
friendliness, humanity, directed our dealings 
with a needy and childish people ? No ! It 
takes arrogance, pride, selfishness, contempt, 
to make war. War stands for the moral 
conditions of barbarism. 

I am not laying down an abstract prin- 
ciple. I do not say that force should never 
be used. I say that there never should 
be hate, enmity, or unfriendliness between 
peoples. You are still barbarous while you 
hate or despise men. It is not a Christian 
or a civilized nation which willingly rushes 
into war. I say that as soon as you are a 
Christian, that is, a civilized people, you 
will find civilized means far mightier than 
war, with which to attain the ends for 



THE PROCESS OF CIVILIZATION. 255 

which men still ignorantly excuse the waste, 
cruelty, and folly of fighting, 
/ The work of civilization, whether on a 
small scale in the family, the neighborhood, 
and the village, or on the vast scale of in- 
ternational relations, can never be success- 
fully carried on by a " superior class " of 
wise and good people who set themselves 
over against the ignorant and the bad ; it 
must be carried on by men and women who 
shall be the genuine friends and helpers, the 
comrades as well as the leaders, of those 
less wise, able, or advanced than themselves. 
It must never be carried on in the spirit of 
antagonism and opposition, but in the far 
mightier spirit of sympathy. The power of 
its thinkers and leaders will be measured 
by the breadth and sincerity of their good 
will. 

There ought to be no need of further 
illustration. Is it not plain that the law 
of good will has a universal application? 
There is no event, no act, no word, no 
supreme crisis of life in which man may 



256 THEOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION, 

let the good will go, and turn on the 
forces of ill will, egotism, and selfishness. 
Letting the good will go out of him, he 
lapses straightway into the child or the 
savage. Keeping the flow of the serene 
good will in his soul, he walks the earth, 
fearless, erect, with God's sunshine on his 
face. To live thus is the essence of civil- 
ization; the individual and the social wel- 
fare are thus secured and harmonized. To 
live thus is practical religion ; the more 
thoroughly we try, test, and experience it, 
the more completely it will be found to 
grow out of, and to illustrate, a Theology, 
that is, a divine plan of the universe. This 
Theology matches the needs of civilized 
men in a civilized world. As Coleridge 
says: 

*' He prayeth best who loveth best 
All things both great and small, 
Tor the dear God who loveth us, 
He made and loveth all." 



OCT • '''' 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: April 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724) 779-21 1 1 



fA^XI- 



